The End in the Show
by Caseworker-14
Summary: Booth and Brennan are the linchpin that hold the entire Jeffersonian team together, but what happens when the impossible is realized, when the one thing that can never be taken away is? Everything is about to change. Please R&R.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: …And summer boredom for the English Lit. major strikes again. It's been a while since I've actually posted anything - I've really been trying to have some integrity and work on my own original stuff. I guess I can summarize what happened here in one word: Oops. For those of you who are familiar with my Twilight fanfic, Fireworks, such an epic began just this way. I'm not guaranteeing anything, but we'll see where this goes…**

**P.S. This story takes place in Season 6, post-Hannah but pre-6X22. Enjoy!**

**CHAPTER 1: NOTHING EXCITING**

Temprance Brennan lay alone in her bed in the dark, asleep for all intents and purposes, though her senses remained highly tuned to the goings on around her – an irrevocable result of six years working in close acquaintance with the FBI. Even prior to this rather unorthodox cornerstone in her career she'd never really considered herself to be a heavy sleeper. She'd done too much travelling and gotten herself into too much trouble not to know better than to ever completely let her guard down anymore. Perhaps it was for this reason – or maybe because something inside of her, something intrinsically linked to intuition or the divine, had been unexpectedly stimulated, though she was more likely to attest to the former – that her consciousness stirred even before her ears caught the subtle click of her front door unlocking.

Her blue eyes opened a sliver in the darkness and she blinked once, giving her retinas a moment to adjust before she moved. She heard the subtle creak of the door being opened, the whisper of someone's careful footsteps as they proceeded down the hall into her living room without turning on any lights. Experience and highly adept anthropological training led her to deduce such footsteps belonged to a male, either tall and muscled or short and heavy-set; assuming the assailant wasn't taking deliberately long and slow strides, she could conclude that tallness was the more likely explanation.

Silently opening the drawer in her nightstand, she reached in and retrieved the .357 revolver she'd acquired for such foreseeable occasions , and ghosted soundlessly out from under her sheets, her bare feet skating over the hardwood floor as though they belonged to a bird and not a five-foot-nine, hundred-and-forty-pound scientist. Keeping her back trained to the wall, the bare skin of her shoulders tingling as it came in contact with the cool, dry paint of her hallway around the spaghetti straps of her nightgown, the gun poised in both hands at her waist, she sidled slowly down the length of the corridor behind her intruder, working all the while to keep her breathing in check – deep, quiet, regular intakes that would keep her heart rate down and controlled exhales that would be undetectable to anything short of superhuman hearing.

She took one more step and she'd reached the end of the hall. She could see him now, a dark outline standing motionless in the center of her living room, as though appraising the setting with a relishing air. Confident, and suppressing all irrational pin-pricks of fear she might have felt, she raised the gun to his back. If it hadn't been for the delicate click of the hammer being cocked in the darkness, he never would have been alerted to her presence at all. Almost instantaneously she saw the muscles in his back tighten and he froze, raising both hands to shoulder-height in a non-threatening motion. "Don't shoot," beseeched a velvety, slightly tense voice that immediately disarmed her in all ways ranging from emotional to physical – the only voice which had ever outwitted her in conversational combat.

"Booth!"

He turned and she launched herself at him, pitching the cocked revolver across the room as she felt a surge of elation thrill through her body, converting the adrenaline into excitement.

"Whoa! Bones!" He caught her as she threw her arms around his neck, shielding and embracing her at the same time as the gun landed with a metallic _thunk _against the baseboard of the adjacent wall. He'd closed his eyes in that split second of uncertainty, squeezing them tightly shut, as he tended to do, against the possibility that he might, once again, about to be blasted into oblivion. She raised her chin over his shoulder, mistakenly reading the way he was crushing her against him as one of his strange ways of showing affection.

"When did you get back from Israel?" She demanded, pulling away just enough to hold him at arm's length, grasped securely by the upper arms between her hands. He had even more protuberant bicep and brachialis capacity than he had six months ago….

"About an hour ago," he replied, prompting from her that disapproving tilt of her head and reproachful fix of her gaze that used to so easily render him – a trained interrogator – into abashed silence. "I thought I would surprise you." He offered up the winning half-smile that had salvaged him so many times in the past in the feeble hope that, for once, it would work on her. Brennan merely looked provoked.

"At five in the morning?" She challenged. "By breaking into my apartment?"

He tried the smile again. "Just like old times, huh?" He raised both arms in the air in a dramatic flourish of revelation. "Surprise!"

She shot a pointed glance toward the front door as she turned and flicked on the light. "Did you pick my lock?"

Suddenly Booth sobered. "Who gave you a gun!" He questioned fervently, evading the question. At this Brennan looked slightly affronted.

"I've always had a gun," she informed him matter-of-factly, as though he had asked when she'd started wearing contacts.

A humourless smirk eclipsed Booth's features. "Well you really shouldn't," he remarked a bit shortly as he shouldered past her to retrieve the weapon from where it had landed, wedged between the floor and the wall, having blessedly not been discharged.

Brennan followed his motions with her gaze, pivoting sharply on one bare heel as he moved around her. "What's that supposed to mean?" She retorted, irredeemably vexed.

"It means," Booth countered, grunting slightly as he straightened from picking up the gun, "that you've shot people before. Me included." He emptied the chamber into his palm and pointed the diffused barrel at her emphatically. His smooth voice grew suddenly serious. "You should know better than to throw a loaded firearm across the room." He said this in a tone which almost inferred he was speaking to an eight-year-old, rendering Brennan momentarily into silence. She found she considered the relationship they shared to be relatively unconventional in this way; sometimes he would behave toward her as though she were his superior in every conceivable way, infinitely more intelligent and able to equal, if not supersede, his formidability in a potentially hazardous situation, and others he would treat her as though she were something that needed protecting, virtually infantile in her helplessness to take care of herself. She briefly considered disputing this tendency of his, but then decided under the circumstances it might be best to simply alter tactics.

"So did you catch a terrorist?" She inquired instead, her piercing eyes widening in genuine interest.

Booth grimaced in obvious discontent, like some carnivorous hunter that had just been denied a meal. "No," he groaned, avoiding her gaze while he played with various parts of the .357 she'd nearly killed him with between his hands. "The FBI thinks there probably never _was _a terrorist." He shrugged as though this mattered little to him, though Brennan knew him far too well to ever believe it. "When we get calls like that a lot of the time it's just a false alarm – someone cried wolf or something to that effect, or they think…" he shrugged again, reluctant to continue.

"What?" Brennan prompted after a moment.

"They think…it…could have been a diversion of some kind." His deep brown eyes came up to meet hers as he said this, quietly gauging her reaction as he struggled to keep his voice casual. Her expression was unreadable.

"A diversion?" She parroted, the clear plane of her brow furrowing in the way Booth had come to perceive as apprehension. It was the way she sometimes looked when an unexpected twist came up in a case, steering the answer in a direction she didn't want it to go.

"Yeah," Booth replied, noting the way she seemed to swallow this information with a bit of resistance, as though it were bigger than it looked. "You know, to get a certain agent or two out of the way for a while so someone can pull something here in the U.S." He took the sudden look of alarm that hijacked her features then to mean that she, like him, was feeling a patriotic concern for her own country. "But nothing happened, right?" He reassured her, quickly backpedalling to diffuse the panic he could see building behind her eyes. "We're back. I'm back and all is right with the world."

Brennan was quiet for a moment, contemplative. She looked down at the fingernails of her left hand, which she was absently picking at with her right. "Yeah," she answered finally, her voice so quiet she might have been speaking solely to herself. "Everything's fine."

When he didn't say anything else she forced herself to look back up at him, levelling his gaze staunchly with her own. "I'm glad you're back, Booth," she told him, her low voice ringing with the sincerity of church bells.

He opened his mouth so say something in reply but before the words had a chance to arrange themselves on his tongue Brennan had rushed him again, the statement barely off her own lips as she buried her face in his shoulder, locking her deceptively strong arms around his waist this time. Timidly, he raised his own to encircle her bare shoulders, reminded of too many times before when she'd embraced him this way, like a child. A child that needed comforting.

"Hey," he crooned suddenly, his voice softening a bit under the influence of concern but still retaining a ghost of playfulness in case it turned out nothing was wrong, that he'd misread her, though that didn't happen often…. "Are you okay?" He coaxed her shoulders back just enough so he could look her in the face, his forehead still perilously close to hers. "What's with all the hugging?"

Brennan recoiled from him as though she'd received an electric shock, her bold features rearranging themselves instantly into a nonchalant grin. "Nothing," she assured him hastily, her breath thin and feathery like goose down. At the cynical raise of his eyebrows she tried again, taking care to infuse her voice with a considerable amount more substantiality. "Nothing, I'm fine. I just…" this time she was the one to shrug, "missed you. I missed the work we do together. That's all. You know how I find it stimulating."

At this Booth's shoulders and torso heaved once in a soundless laugh. "Yes you do," he granted with a shake of his head, the interworkings of whatever made Temprance Brennan tick remaining perpetually elusive to him.

"I just find it reassuring to have that habitual stimulation again," she persisted, speaking slowly, carefully.

A diminutive, unconvinced smile lifted the corners of Booth's mouth. "Mm." Then he decided on a better response; "So you're saying," he took a step closer to her, raising one hand thoughtfully, as though struggling to grasp a concept, "that you're addicted to me like a smoker is nicotine?" He arched one eyebrow impishly toward his hairline, that roguish half-smile lighting charmingly upon his lips again.

Brennan returned the smile in good humour, though it didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. "If that's the way you'd prefer to describe it," she allotted, leaning back from him before doing an abrupt one-eighty and making a bee-line for the kitchen.

Booth grinned and watched her go. "Oh, I would."

"Do you want something to drink?" She called over one shoulder, ignoring him. "Or would you prefer to just head home? I imagine you must be quite fatigued after a twelve-hour flight…"

"Nah," Booth dismissed the assumption with a nonchalant shrug, resisting the urge to let his head rest against his shoulder when it came close to his ear, his skull screaming for the supple support of a pillow. "I'm still a bit jet-lagged and with the time difference right now it's noon for me." He paused, stifling a yawn. "High-time for a drink."

Brennan was quiet as she reached up for the bottle on the top shelf of her cupboard and poured the contents into two scotch glasses, imparting just enough liquid to cover the bottom brim of each.

"So what about you?" Booth questioned casually from the other room, his voice lethargic as he collapsed onto the couch, working with both hands to rub the drowsiness from his face while her back was turned. "Anything exciting happen while I was gone? Get into any trouble?"

If he had been watching her he would have noticed the muscles in her back tense, her shoulders stiffening as she finished pouring the drinks, and took an excessive amount of time screwing the cap back onto the bottle. She opened her mouth to reply, but found her throat had gone unexpectedly dry. Reaching for one of the glasses, she raised it to her lips under the pretence of remedying this while at the same time stalling for time. Reluctantly, she thought back over the time they had spent apart, what she could possibly say to convey what had gone on in a way that wouldn't result in Booth's head exploding….

_Four months earlier…_

_Blood poured from the deep puncture wound in her side, scarcely visible as it stained the maroon carpet of the apartment building's hallway, darkened under shadow of night. The units were quiet as she staggered past them, using both hands to dam the gaping hole in her abdomen while she squinted at the numbers on the doors she pitched her body weight against in turn, searching for the one she needed. Her vision was beginning to swim; reeling disks of angry red bloomed across her line of sight, creating the illusion that blood was pooling behind her eyes, also. She squeezed them shut for a moment against the sweat that was spilling from her forehead, the blinding pain in her stomach…._

_She knew it wouldn't be long before shock set in. She could already feel it beginning to take effect, depriving her blood cells of the oxygen they needed to maintain control over her body. Her limbs felt stiff, paralyzed, almost, as she struggled to move. Try as she might she couldn't straighten the crook in her elbow, disengage her right foot from the rigid set of her ankle joint. Her surroundings were rolling dizzyingly around her, making her nauseous and causing her to become disoriented in an effect not unlike that of alcohol. She was fighting to remain conscious._

_She had only a little further to go. She was sure of it. She was close, now. She could make it. She had to keep going. Ignoring the sickening tang of blood in her mouth, she forced herself to swallow a few shallow, agonized breaths, then gathered herself for another surge of progress. She hurtled herself at the dark expanse of hallway, doing her utmost not to perceive it as an interminable tunnel, with no light visible to indicate an end. She had to clamber forward against the wall for support, long past being able to hold herself upright._

_Then she found it. Stumbling to a halt, she peered at the number on the door as though it were a mirage, barely seeing it, scarcely daring to believe it. She took the most fleeting of moments to revisit her torturous journey here, verifying that she was in the right place, the right building, on the right floor. Then, deciding she could wait no longer, she exhausted what remained of her strength in one fierce, quick rap on the door, praying – not that she believed in the power of prayer to any extent – for it to be enough. She highly doubted she possessed the strength for a second attempt. Then she staggered back away from it and crumpled against the opposite wall, spent._

_It seemed like an eternity before she finally heard the bass rhythm of footsteps behind the door, though she couldn't be certain that wasn't the thrum of her own pulse in her ears. God, it was like thunder…._

_A sliver of light bled out from the crack beneath the door moments before it opened, and she heard the music of a proverbial voice, husky with sleep; "Someone better be dying," it was saying as the face it belonged to appeared in the gap. "And I stress _dying _not _dea-_" The voice broke off as the two dark, almond shaped eyes landed on her broken form, sweeping transiently over the blood that was weeping from between her pallid fingers, the racing tide of her chest as she struggled to breathe , the no doubt ashen tone of her complexion before finally meeting her own pair of wide, beseeching eyes._

"_Oh my God," Cam breathed in an almost inaudible voice, barely above a whisper. For an almost too-long moment she merely stood, rooted where she was by the shock, staring, and then her sense of accountability came flooding back to her in a trauma-crushing torrent and she sprang forward, hitching one of Brennan's arms around her neck before heaving her to her feet. Her friend and colleague let out a cry that made her cringe as though she herself had been subject to the physical pain. There was so much blood…her clothes were soaked with it. How she had managed to make it this far, even if she'd been wounded on the street right outside her building, Cam couldn't possibly fathom._

_She deposited Brennan on the couch and leapt back from her, as though whatever she'd suffered was contagious, as though the burden of having to witness one of her best friends – one of her _strongest _friends – in this state like this now when she wasn't expecting it was going to cause the shock to set in for her, too. Already her blue bathrobe was purpled with blood. _

"_Dr. Brennan," she breathed, her voice sounding so thin Brennan thought it might break at any moment. "What…how did…?" the words caught in her throat as her eyes flickered from Brennan's tortured face to the gaping hole in her body. "What happened to you?" She managed finally, but the moment the words were out of her mouth she retracted them. Sucking in her breath as though she could physically swallow the question, she pivoted briskly on one heel and made a bee-line for the phone. "I'm calling an ambulance," she amended, her voice growing stronger with a sense of urgency. "We've got to get you to a hospital."_

_Brennan's voice was so frail that at first Cam couldn't be entirely certain she hadn't imagined it. "No," the word was virtually inaudible, a ghostly fingerprint in the air between them._

_Cam rounded on her, the phone poised inches from one ear. "Excuse me?"_

"_No," Brennan repeated, her voice coming into focus. "No hospitals. That's what he'll be expecting. He'll be waiting for me –"_

"_Who?" Cam slammed the phone back down on its receiver, turning her full attention back to her friend. "Who did this to you?"_

_It took Brennan a few moments to answer. The oral stimulation of talking was helping her to stay conscious, but her breath was still coming in uncontrolled, shallow gasps. Even if she did manage to keep her cognizant mind functioning, she couldn't keep her body from succumbing to her injuries much longer. Soon the cell damage would cause her organs to start shutting down. She had to speak now. "It's Brodsky," she managed finally, the words sounding like motor oil as she choked them off her tongue._

"_Brodsky," Cam parroted, working to swallow this information._

"_He…" Brennan closed her eyes against the wave of pain and inhaled shakily. "He's trying to send a message to Booth. Something about…collateral damage." Her face crumpled again against the white-hot ache in her side and her sense of urgency redoubled. "I came because you're a doctor," she illuminated hastily, utilizing as few words as she possibly could to conserve energy. "I can't go to a hospital…he'll find me…he was trying to kill me…."_

_Cam's mouth fell open and she stared at her friend through an expression of blatant torture, her hands inching away from her sides in a gesture of helplessness. "Brennan, I may be a doctor," she allotted dubiously, "but I can only do so much to help you here. The extent of your injuries…" her eyes widened uncertainly as they strayed back to Brennan's blood-saturated shirt, "…I don't have an anaesthetic or an irrigation syringe or antibiotics –"_

"_Do you have rubbing alcohol and a sewing kit?" Brennan interrupted, her voice cutting._

_Cam drew back, startled. "Yes."_

"_Then get moving."_

_It took Cam seconds to assemble what she needed. Experience told her that Dr. Brennan was very rarely – even under the most extreme of circumstances – irrational about her decisions. As much as her instincts as both a friend and professional physician were screaming for her to get Brennan to legitimate medical treatment, she knew that her reasons for being reluctant to do so must be thoroughly justified. If she asserted that Brodsky would be waiting for her at the nearest hospital, or maybe even watching multiple hospitals within the vicinity, to eradicate her, then Cam would bet her career on it that she was right. If she had the best chance of saving her life here than getting her the professional treatment she needed, then that was what she was going to do._

_Organizing what scanty tools she had in the most systematic way that she could on the coffee table next to the couch, Cam lowered herself onto the cushions next to Brennan and carefully raised her shirt just above the line of her belly-button, exposing fully for the first time the jagged cavity in her skin, the rapidly-spreading crimson stain that was blooming across the porcelain plane of her stomach. "It's a knifing," she confirmed, more to herself than to Brennan, who was already fully aware of the way in which she'd been injured. Her voice was level, fighting for composure as she reached for the alcohol._

_Brennan watched her pour and choked back the scream that seethed to her lips at the blistering sear that followed. Breathing heavily, she swallowed hard and rifled through her brain for a subject to distract her. "Where's Michelle?" She inquired, her head tilted back and her eyelids squeezed tightly shut over her oceanic eyes._

"_Asleep," Cam replied absently, her own eyes focused and unblinking as she swabbed at the wound with a sterilized dish towel. "That girl could sleep through a hurricane crashing through her bedroom…" her voice trailed off momentarily and she switched out the towel for a pair of sewing shears. Suddenly she looked very disconcerted. "But I don't get it," she stated abruptly, nearly leaving Brennan conversationally in the dust as she switched gears. "Brodsky's a sniper. Why would he risk stabbing you at close range when he can simply pick you off from a distance with a high-power rifle?"_

_Brennan hardly looked offended by the question. "It wasn't Brodsky himself," she illuminated without missing a bit._

_Cam chanced a brief glance up at her, her brow furrowing. "But you said –"_

"_He has an apprentice. A young soldier he's training to illegally take out bad guys in case Booth takes him in, I'm hypothesizing."_

"_That's right, Brodsky considers himself the supplement to the American government's justice deficiency," Cam reiterated to herself, musing as she turned back to the wound. "But then…why would he attack you? If he's only out to kill bad guys –"_

"_He's after Booth," Brennan clarified before Cam was finished. "He knows Booth is actively trying to take him in and he's got this…twisted personal score to settle. He's trying to get Booth to back off his case and now he's changing his tactics. He's going to go through the ones Booth…the ones he's close to, to try and deter him from persisting with his attempts to catch him."_

_At this, understanding dawned over Cam's features at the same time that a radiating beam of alarm did. "We've got to call Booth," she reasoned in a low, dangerous voice. "We've got to get him back here." Cam made another move for the phone but Brennan caught the sleeve of her bathroom and pulled her back onto the couch with a startling amount of force for someone who'd been stabbed in the stomach._

"_No!" She yelped, so loudly that Cam fired a fleeting glance at Michelle's bedroom door. It remained stoic. "That's exactly what Brodsky wants! If Booth knew Brodsky was targeting others in his place he would hand himself over, walk right into Brodsky's trap." Brennan's gaze was suddenly severe, penetrating. "He can't know about this," she asserted, her own voice growing deep and trembling as the words shuddered their way off her tongue, tasting sour. The hand that had grasped Cam's robe was now clutching her wrist, so hard that Cam was certain she felt the bone bruise._

_Cam stared at her for a long moment, unmoving, gauging the level of sanity behind her pain-maddened eyes. Finally, she couldn't help but come to the conclusion that Brennan was right, as usual, and as much as she hated to admit it. Booth, with almost unfailing reliability, played the hero even when he himself _wasn't _the reason people were being put in danger. He couldn't sit back and allow someone – even someone he wasn't close to – to be hurt if it could be stopped. It was in his nature. Brodsky knew that, and was conversely playing to Booth's weaknesses. This would ruin Booth…._

_Grudgingly, Cam returned to her work, probing at the wound with the scissors and doing her best to clean up the edges while simultaneously trying to keep Brennan's attention on anything but what she was doing. "You were lucky," she informed her conversationally, keeping her eyes on Brennan's abdomen. "The knife missed any major organs. As long as I can get this cleaned and closed and get your fluids replenished before you bleed out you should be just fine."_

_Wearily, Brennan's features contorted into what Cam could just barely discern as a wry smile. "Thanks," she replied, her tone a tightrope between heart-felt sincerity and sarcasm._

"_No problem," Cam managed a miniscule smile in return. "So…he attacked you." It was more of a question than a statement, a probe for details._

_Brennan nodded. "Yes, just outside the Jeffersonian," she confirmed. "I was on the way to my car -"_

_"And you got away?" Cam raised her eyebrows and looked up at Brennan admirably, though her friend's answering expression indicated this much should have been childishly obvious._

"_Of course I got away." She looked almost offended that Cam had even had to ask. Regarding Brennan's features with what was almost a look of humour on her own, it was only then that Cam noticed the abrasions on her face – a shallow graze running from the crown of her forehead to her temple and a deep gash across her chin. There was a dusky shadow beneath one eyebrow that hinted at a guaranteed shiner in the morning, once the tissue had a chance to bruise. Cam had to resist the urge to produce a dark smile all over again. Brennan had never been one to go down without a fight._

"_You know this isn't over," Cam declared, sobering suddenly. "If Brodsky knows he didn't successfully remove you from the picture tonight he'll keep trying. He'll come after you again and again until the job's finished."_

_For the first time since she'd arrived at Cam's apartment, Brennan looked genuinely afraid. "What should I do?" She beseeched, her voice growing small and her muscles going limp against the couch cushions, the intellectual fight going out of them._

"_You've got to get a gun," Cam asserted, glancing up briefly from her work to level Brennan's gaze with her own. "Something to protect yourself when you're alone…"_

"_Booth says I shouldn't have a gun," Brennan disputed in a rational tone, shaking her head softly._

_Cam resisted the urge to sigh in exasperation. "Well Booth isn't here is he?" She almost snapped in reply, and for the briefest of moments Brennan thought she detected the slightest inflection of blame in her voice. Cam returned her eyes to her friend's abdomen, pulling them out of reach of Brennan's probing gaze. "Under the circumstances I think he would understand," she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper._

_Brennan could think of no response to this. She half-sat half-lay, reclined on the couch in aggrieved silence while Cam finished cleaning the wound as best she could, constantly applying pressure as she deposited the scissors and soiled towels into a mixing bowl filled with sterilizing solution. Finally, she readied a needle and thread. Picking up a wooden curio of a Doric column miniature from her coffee table, she held it out to Brennan. "Here," she said. "Bite down on this." ***_

Brennan lowered the glass from her lips, her voice coming out husky and viscous against the burn of the alcohol as she compiled her response. "No," she told Booth lightly. "Nothing exciting."


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: Okay, sorry for the delay on this chaper; I had to go back and do a rewrite because I started out with a pregnant Angela and then realized halfway through that although this story takes place in Season 6, I had to insert a six-month interval for Booth to be in Israel, so baby Michael would have already been born. Anyway, hope it all lines up for everyone! Enjoy!**

**Chapter 2: The Truth in the Lie**

Brennan made straight for the kitchen when she woke late the next morning. Her apartment was already bathed in the mature blaze of golden, midmorning sunlight, and she found she had to navigate the cupboards with her eyes half-closed against the brightness as she fitted a fresh filter into the coffee maker and transferred a few spoonfuls of granules into it out of the can. Waking at such an uncharacteristically late hour had left her frazzled to some degree. She had an organized morning routine that corresponded snugly with each hour she normally had to occupy, which she implemented each day almost obsessive-compulsively. Now, having slept through an uneven chunk of said hours, she hardly knew what to do with herself; what could she afford to cut out of her day? What was important enough to prioritize and squeeze into her now limited time?

She made up her mind to skim through the morning paper while she waited for the coffee. Turning toward the living room, however, she halted abruptly, confounded, when her oceanic eyes landed on the couch. "Oh," she murmured quietly to herself, remembering. "Right."

Heading back into the kitchen, she waited for the coffee to finish straining, drip by maddening drip, and filled two mugs to just below the brim. She was on her way back to the living room, coffee in hand, when a knock at her front door altered her trajectory. She hesitated, torn, her eyes flitting between the couch and the door until finally, on the second knock she swivelled midstride and moved down the hallway.

She checked the peephole – a force of habit that had become particularly strong over the past few months – and groaned inwardly as she stepped back and carefully shifted the coffee mugs to one hand so she could open the door. It was way too early for this…

"What's the story, Morning Glory?" Hodgins carolled a bit too brightly for Brennan's liking as his pale eyes drank in her knee-length blue bathrobe and unbrushed hair. "We've been trying your cell all morning but there was no answer." His gaze gravitated toward the coffee. "Is one of those for me?" Without waiting for an invitation, he hijacked the fuller mug out of Brennan's grasp and shouldered past her into the apartment. She stood for a moment with her back to him, eyebrows raised at the suddenly empty hallway before she closed the door stoically behind him.

"I just woke up," she informed him by way of explanation, turning to face him with her now free hand massaging her closed eyelids.

Hodgins eyed her tentatively. "Yeah," he replied slowly, shooting her a sidelong glance. "I figured." He paused, waiting for her to elaborate. When she didn't, he pinned her with a scrutinizing stare, suddenly noting the dusky half-moons underscoring her eyes. "Are you okay?" He questioned. "You look like hell."

Brennan lowered her hand from her face and shot him a look of daggers that made him take a physical step back. "I didn't get much sleep last night," she retorted defensively, as though there were no excuse for Hodgins not being aware of this. She raised her own mug to her lips, grimacing when the fresh brew scalded her tongue. She swallowed hard and when she spoke again, her tone was even more biting. "Why are you here, Dr. Hodgins?" She demanded blatantly. Then, as a slightly softer afterthought, "Where's Angela?"

"She's at the lab with Mikey," Hodgins replied. "We've got a case," he added in a tone suddenly ablaze with color, his blue eyes sparkling. "And it's a pretty high profile one too, so the clock is ticking; one of those government higher-ups they're so eager to get squared away before the media sinks their fingernails into it. Whoa!" He started suddenly as, out of the corner of his eye he spotted movement from the couch in Brennan's living room. At the mention of a case the occupant had abruptly sat up, bare-chested and bed-headed, and craned over the back of the couch to look at him and Brennan through two groggy, deep brown eyes. "What the-?"

"Look who's back from Israel!" Brennan proclaimed, gesturing dramatically to the couch before Hodgins had a chance to comment further on the spectacle. He hardly seemed to have heard her.

"What are you _doing here_?" He queried candidly, his tone a bit too blunt.

Booth blinked back at him, looking confused and slightly affronted. "What are _you _doing here?" He countered, his dark gaze darting from Hodgins suddenly to land pointedly on Brennan.

"I live here," she responded evenly, mistaking his eye contact for a direct address.

Booth melted a look on her that suggested he thought she was slightly ridiculous. "Not you," he retorted a bit testily and proceeded to throw the duvet cover she'd provided for him off, swinging his legs over the side of the couch so his bare feet could land squarely on the floor.

"Booth came by last night to surprise me," Brennan illuminated anyway, bypassing Booth's question as she turned her attention back to Hodgins, who arched one eyebrow a bit puckishly.

"And he stayed the night?" He affirmed, his velvety voice suddenly smoothing behind a Cheshire-Cat grin.

As usual, the implication went right over Brennan's head. "It was five in the morning!" She rationalized, looking harassed as she completely missed the mark Hodgins had proffered. "I wasn't about to send him all the way home!"

Hodgins rounded on Booth. "You came to her apartment at five in the morning?"

"He broke in," Brennan corrected quietly before Booth had a chance to answer.

Hodgins' fascination intensified. It was the look he acquired when he caught the scent of a prospective conspiracy in a case. "_You broke in_?"

"What do you _want_, Hodgins?" Booth inquired curtly, looking every bit as agitated as his partner, and, for fear of being cornered and throttled by the both of them (as if he could overpower either one on his own), Hodgins changed tactics immediately.

"We've got a case," he relayed to Booth, doing a complete one-eighty without missing a beat.

Booth digested this for all of half a second before his demeanour completely transformed. "Cool." He sprang to his feet, reaching for his pants and tugging them on in one swift motion, securing the red-and-white _Cocky _belt buckle over his boxer shorts. ***

"What have we got?" Booth inquired smoothly as he and Brennan followed Hodgins down a downtown alleyway with a team of investigators. It wasn't difficult to deduce where the body was; there was a flock of medical examiners and documentation experts with high-definition cameras and detailing equipment swarming the area like fruit flies. Cam was already there, crouched knee-deep in a bank of ruptured garbage bags, somewhere among which Booth and Brennan could only assume was the victim. There was a restaurant supply truck parked in the middle of the alleyway nearby, the driver engrossed in a solemn conversation with one of the chief investigators. He was running a hand through his lank, mousy hair, his pock-marked brows knitting together in obvious distress.

"Guy was delivering a produce supply to the cantina down there," Hodgins called back over one shoulder without breaking stride, gesturing to the back entrance of the Mexican restaurant which opened into the alleyway a few yards ahead of where the truck was parked. "Was driving through a pile of garbage when he felt the truck roll over something…."

"Oh." Booth halted in his tracks, inclining his chin and perching both hands on his hips as they came upon the corpse in the same moment that Hodgins finished explaining. Abruptly realizing what they were likely to find, he had to hang back and fight to swallow the bile that rose in his throat while Brennan proceeded forward, kneeling in the decomposing trash next to the victim.

"Hey, Booth!" Cam beamed up at him from her position on the other side of the corpse. "Great to see you back. Trip got cut short, did it?"

Booth swallowed hard and kept his eyes trained on the sky. "Yep, no terrorists in Israel," he replied tightly, his voiced pinched as though he were in physical pain.

"When did you get back?" Cam inquired.

"Last night." Booth just barely managed to choke the words out without letting anything else come up with them.

Cam raised her eyebrows. "Wow," she remarked then, tilting her head pensively as she considered this. "New case turns up on the same day you return to work. That's quite the coinkidink, huh?" She looked up at Booth again expectantly. When he said nothing in reply, she broadened her smile, amused, and returned her attention to the body before her. Most of it was fully intact, but the skull was in shambles, the bone splintered over the pavement in a way not unlike a watermelon that had been flattened under the wheels of a tank. It was spewing brain matter onto and amongst the heaps of compost and fast food containers around it, rendering the face, needless to say, completely unrecognizable.

"The delivery truck ran over the victim's head?" Brennan dove in head-first.

Cam nodded, tweezing at some particulates for samples. "That's certainly the way it looks."

Booth chose that moment to pipe up from where he stood several feet back from the two of them. "That sounds like grounds for cause of death to me," he asserted smartly, chancing a guarded glance at the victim.

Without looking up at him, Brennan shook her head dismissively. "The victim was already dead when he was run over," she corrected, her tone characteristically overruling.

Booth looked indignant. "How do you know that?" He challenged, dropping his eyes back to the corpse as though seeking some sort of confirmation.

Brennan patiently went on to explain. "The amount of blood loss from the rest of the body," she told him, gesturing to the black pools the corpse's body was swimming in, "suggests trauma or some other cause of death."

"Besides," Cam added, looking up at Booth smartly, "if for whatever reason _you _happened to be laying on your back in a dumpster-strewn alleyway at your own accord _and_ you heard a truck coming your way, wouldn't you move?"

"Suicide?" Booth countered, reflecting the question back at her before he had a chance to look like an idiot.

"Death by braining via delivery truck?" Cam reiterated dubiously. "Interesting choice."

"Evenly-distributed blunt-force trauma over an extensive area of the body suggests a fall," Brennan interrupted, redirecting their attention in a way her virtually unsurpassable ability to focus made her so adept at doing. "Probably from a great height."

Hodgins had caught up with them by now, and was hovering close by, waiting none too patiently for his turn at the examination, his insect beakers poised and ready. "Like from a balcony?" He chimed in, inclining his head to look up at one of the building complexes that flanked the alleyway on either side, walling it in. The rest of the team followed his gaze until they were all looking up at the black railing protruding from a residence at least six stories up. "Judge Templeton never showed up in court this morning," Hodgins illuminated in a faint voice, as though he were merely musing quietly to himself. "That's what makes the cops think it's him," he nodded at the corpse. "That and the fact that-" he raised one arm to indicate the balcony, "-that's his apartment."

Suddenly Booth was looking at him with such interest that Hodgins could swear he felt the heat of his brunette eyes blistering into him, and was forced to meet his gaze with his own. "Templeton?" Booth echoed emphatically, his face ablaze with gravity. All at once his eyes snapped from Hodgins back to the body. He pointed. "_That's _Federal Judge Mark Templeton!"

Cam looked up in mild interest. "You know him?"

"Yeah, I know him! He works with the FBI!" Booth exclaimed, an airiness beginning to steal into his voice as disbelief set in. Not that he and the judge had ever been "chummy" by any stretch of the imagination, but they had exchanged smalltalk at the water cooler on a number of occasions. It wasn't as though he found himself stricken with grief in any way. It was just that he was accustomed to seeing him considerably more vocal than this and…you know, with a head.

"I don't want anyone pumping the gun," Brennan declared ardently from her position still bent closely over the victim. "I can't say for sure yet that this is Templeton. Although pelvic structure and analysis of the sternal end of the right fourth rib indicate a male in his mid-to-late forties."

A miniscule smile lifted the corners of Booth's mouth, the shock of the moment effectively diffused by his partner's lack of expertise concerning social vernacular. "Jumping the gun," he amended smoothly, fighting to keep his voice even as Brennan's azure gaze jumped up to meet his.

"What?"

"The phrase is '_jumping the gun'_. Not _'pumping'_."

Brennan seemed to consider this for a moment. "That," she allotted objectively after a moment, "makes considerably more sense." She returned her gaze to the body. "Level of decomp and limited insect activity suggests he's only been dead a few hours."

At this Hodgins actually looked peeved. "Oh well that's no fun."

Brennan frowned, ignoring him as she craned further over the body. "I can't determine anything else here without risking compromising evidence. We'll have to take it all back to the Jeffersonian for a more thorough analysis. Then I'll be able to determine cause of death as well."

"I thought he fell," Booth revisited, gesturing to the balcony with that too-conclusive air that Brennan disapprovingly associated with his speculative nature. "Like I said, suicide."

Brennan's eyes flashed. "I can't conclusively say that yet, Booth," she repeated. She looked around at Cam and some of the investigators behind her. "Did anyone check the apartment?" She inquired, addressing no one in particular.

Cam nodded once, business-like. "Yeah," she replied. "Empty."

"Wait," Booth interjected again, a child starved for attention. "You think there could have been foul play involved?" When Brennan merely looked up at him through wide, suggestive eyes and a tight-lipped frown that clearly conveyed her dissatisfaction at not being able to say this for certain yet, either, Booth abandoned the inquiry and turned on his heel to move in the direction of the parked truck. "Right," he said, drawing in a deep breath in a motion Brennan recognized as him gearing up for action. "I'm gonna go talk to the delivery driver. You guys-" he waggled the fingers on one hand half-heartedly at the mangled remains, "-bag it or…scoop it or…whatever you squints do. I'll be back." That said, Booth pushed his sunglasses further up his nose with one index finger and strode away toward the truck.

Cam waited until he was sufficiently out of earshot, then glanced around to make certain that Hodgins, too, was a safe enough distance away, kneeling amongst the trash trapping insects in petri dishes. Turning her mocha eyes back to Brennan, she leaned closer to her under the pretence of examining the body from another angle. "So, Booth's back," she stated, rather redundantly, in Brennan's opinion, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Yes, he is," Brennan concurred matter-of-factly, refusing to look up from the remains to meet Cam's gaze.

"That must be a relief."

Brennan considered this for a moment. To be honest she wasn't entirely certain whether she would rather have Booth safely out of Brodsky's way in a foreign country or close at hand where she could keep an eye on him, and vice versa. It was her his former sniper comrade was after, after all; she never suspected he would go after Booth directly. Having him around again certainly came with added benefits of reinforced protection – something she had always been able to count on him for, but having him so close (both physically and emotionally) to the situation made her nervous. She wasn't a good liar. Or a good secret-keeper, for that matter. If Booth spent much time around her, as he always did, she was sure he was bound to find out what was going on sooner or later. He knew her too well for her to be able to keep something like this from him. Finally, she seemed to settle on a satisfactory response. "I suppose," she replied absently, in a well-practiced air of nonchalance.

Cam wasted no time in going straight for the jugular. "Are you going to tell him?" She questioned bluntly, prompting her friend to look up finally, startled by the very notion, only to discover Cam's gaze drilling into her with the blistering intensity of an industrial-strength furnace.

Brennan levelled her with her own significant look. "Of course not," she replied evenly. The truth was, a part of her _wanted _Booth to know, thought it only right that he be allowed in on something that so irrefutably involved him. Not to mention she hated lying to him, even if it was only by omission. But, rationally speaking, she could never allow herself to entertain such notions. Once Booth knew there would be no stopping him from complying with exactly what Brodsky wanted. Brodsky would never be caught. More people would die. He would never trust her again. It would be the end of the investigation. The end of…everything.

At her answer Cam looked a bit incredulous, returning to her work with a discontented raise of her full, dark eyebrows. "I'm not going to tell you what to do," she told her with the air of someone who thought she was about to anyway. "That's your call. But Brennan," she paused until her friend, tired of waiting for the rest of what she had to say, finally raised her eyes again to look at her, "be careful." She held Brennan's gaze for another long moment, branding the words into her under the heat of her eyes.

Brennan feigned an undaunted laugh, something so paper-thin Cam could have read a newspaper through it. "Why?" She breathed. "I can handle Brodsky's apprentice. I think I've proved that already."

Cam nodded in acknowledgement, her eyebrows still raised. "Maybe," she allotted bracingly. "You just better hope Brodsky doesn't decide you're worth coming after personally."

Brennan looked up one more time. "Why?" She asked again.

Cam grew sombre. "Remember what Booth said," she warned, her voice suddenly low, dangerous. "Brodsky doesn't miss."***

"He broke into her apartment?" Angela reiterated ardently for what had to be the thousandth time, juggling four-month-old Michael in the crook of one arm while she struggled to right the disarray of equipment on her lab table with the other – pacifiers mingling uncomfortably with the likes of art pencils and sound enhancers, all peppered with a snow shower of baby powder.

Hodgins' husky blue eyes were so bright it almost hurt to look at them. "And spent the night on the couch," he confirmed, nodding a bit scandalously, also for what must have been the thousandth time.

Angela inhaled deeply and rolled her eyes as though this were almost too much for her to handle. "Of…course he did," she affirmed airily, closing her eyes for a moment.

"Hey, what are you guys talking about?" Dr. Brennan's candid, almost agonizingly practical voice nearly made them both jump out of their skin; they turned to see her craning around the open doorframe to the office, looking like nothing more than a disembodied head as she leaned into their conversation.

"Nothing."

"Facial reconstructions." Angela and Hodgins answered hastily at the same time, then exchanged a subtly wounded glance before trying again.

"Facial reconstructions."

"Breastfeeding." Again, they both winced.

Brennan, although appearing slightly bemused by their responses, opted to bypass inquiring further. "Well," she backpedalled carefully, diligently swallowing the reply that bubbled first to her lips, "we've got a nine-hour-old, decomposing body on a table out here; we could kind of use your help."

"Yeah," Angela said, looking deterred. "I try to keep my _newborn _shielded from rotting _corpses_, at least until he's old enough to hold his own head up," she accentuated the words "newborn" and "corpse" so Brennan might be able to grasp the inherent contradiction of them both being used in the same sentence, then tacked on brightly, "but feel free to fire any skull fragments my way if you need a facial reconstruction."

Brennan shook her head seriously, the irony in her friend's voice going straight through her as though she were made of vapours. "The victims skull was irreparably fragmented by the tires of the delivery truck," she clarified matter-of-factly.

Angela's features brightened considerably. "So you don't need me then," she deduced, pleased. Then, turning back to Hodgins, "you go ahead, honey. I'll put Mikey down."

He gave her shoulder an affectionate squeeze. "'Kay," he agreed, and moved to follow Dr. Brennan out of his wife's office. At the door, though, Brennan paused with one hand on the side of the frame.

"And your son's sixteen weeks old," she informed Angela astutely over one shoulder, as though this was something she wasn't already thoroughly aware of. "Developmentally speaking, he's far surpassed the newborn stage." That said, she turned fully and proceeded out onto the lab platform with Angela's husband close on her heels, smiling half-apologetically, half-tolerantly over his own shoulder as he went.

"Right," Angela muttered to herself and Michael once they were gone. "I forgot; you would have him being admitted to X-rated movies and applying to college by now."

Wendell was already examining the body when Dr. Brennan returned with Dr. Hodgins. Booth was still with him, waiting for someone to declare the situation as either murder, suicide or otherwise. "Amount of blood loss," Wendell began without bothering with greetings, "is not congruent with injuries from a fall. There's also no evidence of defensive fractures on either of the humeral lateral epicondyle or the patellas."

Booth raised his eyebrows expectantly in Brennan's direction. "Translation?"

"The victim was already dead when he fell," Brennan illuminated.

Booth heaved a discerning sigh and raised his dark eyes to the glass ceiling above them. "Great," he grumbled. "Murder."

Brennan nodded. "I'd feel secure in that conclusion," she affirmed, turning away from the body then to examine the X-rays that had already been done on it. "I won't be able to tell much more with sufficient clarity until the bones have been cleaned," she disclosed absently, her eyes skating the digitals, "but I'd feel confident in saying that the victim was between forty-six and forty-nine years of age. Six-one, obviously, in height. Approximately one hundred and seventy-five pounds."

"Sounds like Templeton," Booth disclosed when she glanced back at him for confirmation.

"The victim also had skeletal and tissue indicators of a rotated palmer carpal ligament," she went on, indicating an X-ray of what looked like a man's wrist. "Probably attained from a repeated…banging motion."

Booth's eyebrows inched closer to his hairline. "Excuse me?"

"Like this," Brennan attempted a movement not unlike someone striking an air-drum with an imaginary drumstick.

"Oh," Booth sighed, though his tone was less understanding than it was resigned, disappointed, almost. "Like a gavel on the Federal bench."

A satisfied, detached smile brightened Brennan's features. "Yes, exactly," she said.

Booth lowered his eyes to the remains on the table, drawing in a heavy breath. "So this _is _Templeton," he murmured a bit aggrievedly, more to himself than anyone.

Brennan shrugged, unfazed. "The indicators are there."

Booth was quiet for a moment, pensive, before he looked up. "So what killed him?" He wanted to know quietly. Again, Brennan shrugged.

"I won't be able to tell that until the bones have been cleaned," she reminded him, her tone apologetic. "I don't do flesh, remember?"

At that moment, however, a second female voice chimed into the conversation, this one ringing with the authority of someone who possessed infinitely more knowledge on the subject than any of them. "Not so fast," Cam interjected, stepping lithely onto the platform with another X-ray poised in hand. She affixed it to one of the vacant display screens and adjusted the backlighting so the details came into focus. "We just got the results back on one of the deep tissue scans. Take a look at this." She stepped back to reveal the image to the rest of her team, crossing her arms a bit complacently over her chest while she waited for the others to come to the same obvious conclusion any tenth-grade biology student could surmise.

"Whoa." Hodgins was the first to comment, his eyes widening as she stared at the image on the screen.

Without missing a beat or waiting for instruction, Wendell spun back around to face the body, leaning over it with a pair of forensic forceps and delving through the shredded skin of the chest cavity until he managed to procure what was being shown on the X-ray. Pinched delicately between the ends of his tweezers he produced an almost three-inch-long, futuristic-looking brass bullet.

At the sight of it, a shadow fell visibly over Booth's features, and Brennan could almost see his shoulders wilting grimly. Beneath her own breastbone, she thought she felt her heart stop momentarily, felt the leaden, disheartening thunk as it plummeted into the pit of her stomach. "Oh, God," the words tumbled off her lips before she had a chance to stop them, so low they were almost inaudible within the circumference of an area where one could suddenly hear a pin drop.

"Brodsky." Booth's own voice was barely above a whisper as he unnecessarily put a name to the elephant in the room.

For one long, pregnant moment no one spoke, all of them gazing resentfully at the blood-swathed, brazen killing device Wendell held in his grasp, struggling to digest the bitter reality that it had happened again – something they all had the power, but didn't know how to, stop. When someone finally did manage to rally the fortitude to speak up again, predictably, it was Booth. "This makes sense," he mused unexpectedly, still addressing himself more than anyone, an epiphany playing behind his chocolate-brown eyes.

Brennan looked at him blankly. "What makes sense?" She asked, her voice coming out raspy and half-audible, her throat having gone unexpectedly dry. Booth didn't seem to notice.

"The last case Mark Templeton sat on was a serial killer who was accused of murdering four FBI agents in cold blood," he illuminated.

Brennan pinned him with her gaze, comprehension dawning on her elegant features. "What happened to him?" She inquired, even though she was pretty sure she already knew.

"He was acquitted," Booth confirmed. "Walked without so much as a week's worth community service."

Cam raised her eyebrows and sucked in a tight breath at this. "Bet Brodsky wasn't too happy about that," she remarked, looking suggestive.

Booth returned his own gaze to the body on the table. "No," he replied pointedly. "He wasn't."

At that moment the tension that was currently suffocating the room was severed, rather abrasively, by Angela waltzing vibrantly into the fray, the sunny hue of her features betraying her as oblivious to the grim proceedings that had been underway here only moments before. "Okay," she sang in a cheery voice that made Hodgins start. "I put Mikey out. He should be down for a couple of hours so I'm free as a bird. Oh," her dark eyes settled on the object still held aloft in Wendell's forceps, "bullet wound," she observed, sounding only mildly entranced. "Cool." Then her eyes lighted on her friend, widening suddenly under the stimulus of a much more interesting brainwave. "Ooh! Brennan, did you show Booth your scar yet?"

Booth's eyes were on Brennan's face almost instantaneously, and she had to work to keep her features composed as the panic catapulted her heart back up into her throat. "Scar?" He parroted, his voice leaping up an octave as his gaze intensified. "What scar? What happened?"

"Oh, Dude," Hodgins interjected before Brennan could answer, his own expression shining almost fanatically as he remembered, "it's _so _hard core."

"Angela, we're kind of in the middle of something…right now," Cam came to Brennan's rescue, shooting her friend and employee a furtive, meaningful glance.

Angela looked suddenly apologetic. "Oh, sorry…."

"No, I wanna know," Booth contended heatedly, taking a step closer to Brennan so she could smell his aftershave, his eyes dedicated solely to her face, scrutinizing every minute shadow behind her expressions. It was virtually impossible to remain unreadable under Booth's observation. That was what he did. He read people, and to him Brennan was an open book. She had to work hard to keep her face inscrutable, as he asked again; "What happened? Were you hurt?" He waited for half a beat. "Bones."

She forced herself to stare directly into the heat of his gaze. It was like trying to look at the sun. She felt a flush work its way up into her cheeks and she could only pray she wasn't turning as red as she felt. "It…it was nothing," she managed airily.

"What happened?" He demanded again, for the hundredth time, his face mere inches from hers.

She opened her mouth and waited for the words, trusting they would come with or without her consent. "I...was doing the dishes, about two months after you left. There was soapy water on the floor and..." she took a deep breath. "I was carrying a chef's knife. I slipped." She shrugged, but it felt awkward, staged. The words, she thought, had come naturally enough. It was the story everyone knew. The story she and Cam had thought it best to tell them when Brennan took an unexpected - albeit brief - leave of absence from work on grounds of injury. They'd thought the fewer people who knew what had really happened the better, for reasons exactly like this.

Still, despite the fact that she must have told the story dozens of times by now - so much that when she got to the part about her landing full-on on the sharpened blade of the kitchen knife, she actually almost sighed tiresomely - she couldn't deny the certainty now that she detected a glint of suspicion behind Booth's eyes. They had gone hard all of a sudden, frozen the way they did when he caught onto a scent while interrogating a suspect and didn't want to let him know he was on to him. His expression was deadpan, impenetrable. He made a movement toward her and she recoiled instinctively. "Let me see," he implored, not really asking.

"No," she shied a way, one hand straying automatically to the spot on her abdomen where the knife had gone in.

One corner of Booth's mouth lifted in a humourless smirk. "Why not?" He demanded on a breath of dark laughter, incredulous.

Brennan inwardly tempered the compulsion to overreact, working to keep her features smooth and her face steady. "Because I told you, it's nothing," she repeated, and ducked under his arm as he outstretched it to return to her post next to the body.

Booth turned slowly to look at her, his pokerface giving way to a look that almost reminded her of a wounded puppy. "Come on, Bones," he half-whispered, his voice softening beseechingly. "It's me."

Brennan, now busying herself over the remains once more, looked up pointedly at her partner, her face open as a wound, her eyes finally conveying nothing but distressingly deep, unadulterated truth. "I know it is."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: The Heart of the Matter**

"So, what exactly do you imagine we're going to find that the cops didn't?" Brennan queried as Booth let them into the apartment that had formerly belonged to Federal Judge, Mark Templeton.

"Oh, who knows," Booth sighed, stepping over the threshold and scrutinizing his surroundings with an eagle eye, Brennan close on his heels. "Now that we know it was Brodsky who killed Templeton maybe we can pick up on something he left specifically for us."

Brennan was already shuffling through a stack of mail on the in-table by the door. "What, like a calling card?" She asked, only half-serious.

Booth half-turned to answer her, his eyes still scanning the apartment. "Anything," he replied.

The residence was a characteristically clean one, from what Booth knew about the lifestyles judges led; the floors were all polished, spotless hardwood, the furniture mahogany, the couch pretentiously leather. There was an office through a door to the right, with a swivel chair and an impressive desk and a brass, piano-style desk lamp. There was an antique bookshelf leaden with encyclopaedia and law volumes that he was certain Templeton had not once touched since he'd purchased them, except to dust them fastidiously. In the center of the living room in which they stood there was a glass coffee table situated at a carefully measured distance between the couch and the sixty-two-inch flat screen that was mounted on the opposite wall. All in all, as far as Booth could tell, nothing out of the ordinary.

"I'm going to check for blood," Brennan's shrewd voice interrupted his musings as he stood with his hands on his hips, chewing on the corner of his top lip while he looked around, admittedly aimlessly, for anything that might lead him to Brodsky.

"I'm sure the cops already did that during the preliminary sweep," Booth muttered absently, not bothering to look at her as she stooped over the hardwood floor, combing it with the indigo beam of her handheld UV light.

Brennan's voice was slow, meticulous as she shone the light across the floor, searching for the definitive glowing cobalt speckling that would indicate traces of bodily fluids while she answered. "And I've never caught something that rudimentary law enforcement missed?" She countered smartly, sweeping a stray strand of hair behind one ear.

Booth considered this. "Okay," he granted. "I'll give you that one, but do me a favour; next time you're in the company of a state police officer, do your best to avoid using the words 'rudimentary law enforcement'."

Brennan shot him a furtive glower but otherwise didn't say anything in response, and after another moment of thought Booth made a motion toward the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. He paused briefly to examine the handle. "The cops close this?" He inquired, twisting at the waist to glance over one shoulder questionably at his partner.

She looked up fleetingly from what she was doing and shrugged. "No idea," she told him truthfully. "Why?"

Booth turned back to the door. When he answered his voice was dim, meditative. "Because I highly doubt Templeton stopped to close it before he was shot," he speculated quietly, ambiguous as to whether or not he intended Brennan to hear him. He slid open the door and stepped out onto the balcony, inhaling the proverbial, smog-thick Washington air with a bizarre kind of relish.

"No blood." Behind him in the apartment, Brennan straightened and extinguished her UV light a bit disappointedly.

"Come check out here," Booth implored, again, only half-turning to address her as his eyes perused the wind-swept rooftops of the surrounding buildings. She stepped through the door and sidled around him, her shoulder brushing the back of his jacket as she squeezed onto the small balcony and crouched to test for blood.

"Quite the view this guy had," she remarked wryly, catching a glimpse of the refuse-strewn alleyway below through the bars of the railing. Then, "oh," her voice lilted noticeably under the boost of a new discovery. "Definitely some spattering out here." She shone her flashlight upon the cement floor, the alien-like beam tinting a spray of dark staining there an incandescent blue. Booth heard, but didn't acknowledge her as he continued to glance around, piecing together a kind of mental jigsaw, Brennan knew. She could almost hear the wheels turning in his brain. Finally, he spun around to face her, clapping his hands together in front of him in that business-like manner Brennan recognized as him gearing up.

"Okay," he commenced as she straightened to her feet before him, drawing as level to his slightly elevated gaze as she could, "here's what I think went down: it was early in the morning so Templeton was probably asleep or in his apartment reading the morning paper when something drew his attention to the balcony." At her inquisitive gaze, Booth elaborated. "Maybe Brodsky shone a light in his apartment or…threw pebbles at the window, Romeo-style, who knows? Anyway," he gestured back inside to the imaginary figure on the couch, "Templeton steps outside to investigate. Brodsky, stationed…maybe there," – Booth turned and indicated a point on the corner of the building opposite the one they were in, where the fire escape provided a convenient mounting place for a sniper rifle, sheltered from view of the surrounding residences – "had to come up with some way of getting Templeton outside since the living room is not in direct trajectory with the fire escape. Once he did that, he somehow got him to lean out over his balcony – maybe looking down in the alleyway for whatever disturbed him – and then," Booth cuffed the inside of one palm with the opposite fist, illustrating instantaneous extermination. "Bang."

Brennan raised her eyebrows. "Seems logical," she concluded after a moment of consideration. Then a minute, cryptic smile lifted the corners of her mouth.

"What?" Booth prodded, an intrigued smirk lighting upon his own lips to mirror hers, though he couldn't say why.

Suddenly Brennan looked a little sheepish. He noted the way her cheekbones became more prominent, her smile swelling to expose the neat, ivory line of her teeth as a blush worked its way into her cheeks and she looked down to study the cement under her feet. "I missed this," she half-whispered earnestly, her voice reticent. Looking up again, she waved a hand between them, her arm spanning the small distance quickly. "Us working together."

Booth's curious smirk melted into an acquiescent smile. "Yeah," he murmured, his dark eyes shining candidly as he looked at her. "Me too."

All at once Brennan felt a raw, annoying pang in her gut, and she was forced to avert her eyes again, looking around searchingly at the surrounding buildings for some point on which to focus her guilty gaze. _Except things aren't the way they used to be, _she was unable to keep the bitter thought from stealing into her mind, as illogical as it seemed. Their partnership wasn't the same. It couldn't be, so long as she kept this invisible moral barrier between them. In all their years together, she had never once lied to him. Or at least if she had, she had never done so intentionally, deliberately, the way she was doing now. She didn't like the effect it had on her. She felt as though she could never speak openly with him again, for fear that if she opened that Pandora's Box to him, he would be subjected to all the hazardous secrets that lay inside, even if the one she was disclosing was one of the more harmless of the bunch. There was a wall, she knew. And she knew he knew. Something that was keeping her at arm's length, a safe but unhappy distance from him. It made her feel unexpectedly, dispiritingly alone. Booth had been the one to tell her once, she now remembered, that she never had to be alone.

There was a hitch suddenly in her train of thought, a beat of blankness where she was delaying the idea her mind wanted to propose from being allowed in, afraid to hear it. Afraid she would listen. And then, like the stark reality of a telegram no wife of a soldier ever wants to get, it came anyway, bursting in with such volume and clarity she couldn't possibly ignore it; maybe he was right. Maybe she didn't have to do this alone. Maybe she was underestimating him. After all, if she was looking at this rationally, in all the years she had known Booth, in all the cases they had worked together, she couldn't count one time that he had let her down. Maybe it was okay to let him in on this. Maybe she had merely been being a coward up until now not to do so already. Maybe after everything _he _had done for _her, _she owed him that much.

Without giving herself any more time to think, she opened her mouth to speak, giving the dam permission to break. "Booth," she began in a stronger voice than she'd expected, "I have to tell you something."

He took a step closer, his gaze intensifying. "Yes, what?" He prompted eagerly, betraying the fact to her that he had been waiting for this, poised to strike whenever she felt she was ready. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, trying to think of where the best place to start would be. That was when a resounding, heart-stopping shot pealed through the air around them, shredding the loaded hush that had fallen between them so the contents spilled, scattering in too many irretrievable directions.

"Booth, look out!" She hurled herself at him, the entire force of her body weight behind her as she threw her arms protectively around his neck and crashed into his chest in an attempt to knock him off his feet. In one smooth, quick-thinking motion, Booth caught her around the waist with one arm and spun her around so he was on top, cradling her body against his the way one cradles a baby upright against their chest, cushioning the back of her head with his free hand as they fell together to the pavement. Adrenaline surging through her system, it was a moment before Brennan could quiet the bass of her blood in her ears enough to speak.

"Are – are you okay?" She breathed, panting heavily, her hands still on Booth's shoulders.

He had frozen where he was, his nose millimeters from hers as he felt the contours of her body against his, fitting like a mould. He was breathing her breath – coffee and spearmint gum. "Yeah," he answered in a small voice, sounding bewildered. "Bones, it was just a car backfire."

She closed her eyes, mortified, feeling every muscle in her body go limp as the tension melted out of her. She released a whoosh of air from her lungs she hadn't even realized she'd been holding. Of course it was a car backfire. She should have been able to tell the difference. Booth was an army veteran and he hadn't even flinched. His dark eyes were searching her face. "Are _you _okay?" He reflected the question, something in his voice suggesting that he didn't mean physically. Brennan had never been the kind of woman to jump at loud noises….

She pinned him with an even gaze. "I'm fine," she lied, her voice automatically steadying itself as she moved to push him off of her.

Booth started to get up, then froze again as his eyes stumbled upon her midriff. "Bones." He felt the breath go out of him and couldn't say any more. The hand that had grabbed for her waist had inadvertently inched up her shirt past her navel, enough to reveal the long, angular scar on her abdomen. He had wondered, when Angela had broached the subject of an injury, how bad exactly it had been. He knew she had been downplaying it when he'd asked her but he had never imagined it to be something of this magnitude. It was a bit like an appendix scar, only higher up, longer and more irregular, as though whatever had made it had been _trying _to tear her apart. It stood out, jagged and angry in stark, white relief from the smooth plain of her stomach. He almost couldn't bear to think how deep it had been….

It was barely a moment, a fleeting beat during which time seemed to stand temporarily still, paralyzed, but long enough for Booth to feel his throat constrict around a nugget of rage, his palm going clammy with sweat as it cradled the curve of her hip close to the scar. He wasn't entirely sure who he was angry with – her, maybe, for not letting him in on something so serious. Or himself, for not being there when it had happened. No, neither of those felt quite right. It was something else he felt this primal outrage rising in him for. Some_one _else, though he couldn't say who exactly.

Brennan bolted upright a little straighter and hastily adjusted her shirt bottom to cover herself. She sprang lithely to her feet, leaving Booth kneeling on the pavement where he was, immobilized, his eyes fixed on some invisible point where her midriff had been only moments before. She could see the severe set of his jaw through the skin of his cheek, the dead set of his eyes under furrowed brows. Impatient to get his thoughts on something else – _anything _else – she outstretched a hand to help him up. When he made no motion toward it, she let it drop back to her side. "It's fine, Booth," she repeated, making sure there was more muscle behind her words this time. Slowly, he turned his head to look at her, his expression unchanged. "I'm fine." She waited one more minute before, unable to take his stony silence any longer, she turned and headed for the door that led back into the apartment. "We're not going to find anything else useful here," she deduced in a thick voice over one shoulder as she left. "We already know what happened. We might as well call it in." Then she disappeared into apartment.

Booth watched her go, staring past her more than at her, then turned his eyes back to the pavement under his knees, thinking. He rubbed his hands up and down his frontal thighs, just for something to do. The back of the hand that had pillowed Brennan's head was badly grazed. He was still struggling to consolidate the tangle of thoughts that were circling one another frantically inside his head when something caught his eye on the ground a few yards from where they had fallen. He reached forward on his knees, grasping Brennan's flashlight in one hand and holding it up to eyelevel meditatively. He was about to call through the open door into the apartment that she had dropped it when a light bulb went off in his head, and he pocketed it.

He was getting to his feet when he noticed something else. Balanced a bit precariously on the corner of the railing – a place where only eyes like Booth's would have seen it – was a compact, square jewellery box, velvet-skinned and classy like the kind engagement rings came nestled in. Tentatively, he reached for it, holding it level between both hands as though he half-expected it to be filled with nitroglycerin. He stared down at it, unblinking while he prized it open. For some reason, he found he was not at all surprised by what was inside. It was a bullet, hand-crafted and brass like the one they'd pulled out of Judge Templeton's body back at the lab. This one was unused, and accompanied with it, tucked neatly into the cubic hollow of the lid, was a regular, folded piece of lined paper. He took it out with his free hand, eyeing it suspiciously as he unfolded it between his fingers. On it, scrawled in dangerously sophisticated handwriting that he recognized, were two words: _Collateral Damage._

He couldn't say why, but for some reason his eyes flickered toward the door that Brennan had disappeared through moments before. Something in his mind was trying to adhere itself to something else, the puzzle pieces trying one another on for size.

"Booth, are you coming?" Brennan's voice made him start and pocket the note and the bullet hurriedly next to the flashlight he had picked up a moment ago.

"Yeah," he called back into the apartment, moving hastily toward the door. "Yeah, I'm coming!"***

"You've been in touch with the FBI?" Brennan was sitting cross-legged on her couch, her laptop perched unevenly in the nest of her knees while she conversed with the lab via webcam.

Cam's disembodied head nodded into the lens. "I let them know we'd release Templeton's body to them for burial as soon as we had everything we needed. We still have a few confirmational tests to run, just for record, but so far I'd say everything lines up; Brodsky nailed the guy."

Brennan nodded and took a sip of her tea, ready to sign off at any moment, but Cam made no move to terminate the web conference. She stared back at Brennan through the screen for a moment, looking as though there were something else she wanted to say. Brennan lowered her mug and fired her computer a side-long, inquisitive glance. "Is…that all, Cam? Because I have a lot of work to do –"

"Speaking of Brodsky," Cam interjected hastily before Brennan could effectively dismiss her, but she was cut off herself before she managed to get another word out.

"No," Brennan deflected strongly, a warning in her voice. "He still doesn't know."

Cam raised her eyebrows in feigned surprise. "Brodsky?" She queried.

Brennan had to supress the urge to roll her eyes. "Booth," she amended.

"Oh!" Cam sounded as though this hadn't been the direction she'd been heading with this all along. Then, sobering, "Well, I don't think you're giving him enough credit," she contended evenly, rushing on before Brennan could interrupt again with her own assertions. "Booth can be impulsive, yes. It's true he's not as rational a person as you are, and _sometimes _he can even be a bit overprotective."

At this mammoth understatement Brennan had to stifle the urge to snort. Cam was granting her all of this in the condescending voice a parent uses to reason with a child, to open them up to the bitter pill they were about to make them swallow.

"But he's not a stupid man," Cam went on, "no matter what you may have thought in the past. He knows Brodsky well and he knows how to deal with his tactics. Keeping this from him is only going to hurt your partnership. It'll put the void between you two that Brodsky wants, and the both of you will be in more danger than ever."

"I know Booth isn't stupid," Brennan maintained stubbornly the second Cam had finished speaking. "And I can take care of myself, Cam."

Cam sighed heavily into the camera and closed her eyes, looking for a moment as though she were silently counting backwards from ten. "I know you can," she assured her finally, her voice cool. "But remember, Brennan, you and I are the only two who know what we know, and I don't know Brodsky. I can't protect you the way Booth can."

Brennan looked a bit affronted at this. "Well did you ever stop to think that maybe I don't need protecting?" She retorted sharply on one breath, her temper rising.

Cam looked as though she was about to say something else, but a knock on Brennan's front door overrode her words. Brennan glanced fleetingly in the direction of the front hall then back at the computer screen. "Cam I've got to go," she relayed unapologetically. "Can we finish this discussion later?" Without waiting for an answer, she folded the laptop shut over Cam's predictable "yes, but" and set it on the coffee table before getting to her feet. As she moved toward the door, she thought about the way Booth always answered his own without checking the peephole, the same way he approached a searing cup of coffee without ever checking the temperature; with reckless abandon. It had been the combined experience of thinking she'd heard a gunshot that day coupled with the way Booth had inverted their defensive stance spur-of-the-moment so _he _was shielding _her_ that had made her change her mind about telling him. What he had done had been instinctive, impulsive, and although it would have been monumentally too late to have any chance of saving her life had it been a bullet instead of a car backfire, she knew she couldn't trust him not to do the same thing if she opened up to him about Brodsky. It was _his _life she was concerned for, not her own.

As if on cue, Brennan glimpsed through the peephole to find Booth standing in her hallway, supporting two grease-spotted paper bags in the cradles of his elbows. Working quickly, she rearranged her features and, for some reason, her hair before she forced a deep, sedative breath through her system and opened the door. There was a beat of silence while he waited for her to extend some form of customary American greeting and then, when she didn't, he jostled the white paper bags pointedly. "I brought Chinese," he sang lightly, completely cavalier.

Brennan looked at him for another moment, scrutinizing his demeanour for anything suspect before she took a step back from the hallway, opening the door wider without a word to invite him in. He made a beeline for the couch and set the bags down on the coffee table, ontop of her closed laptop. "Thought we deserved a little pick-me-up after the work we did today," he offered by way of explanation, straightening and rubbing both hands together in front of him hungrily. "I got all your favourites, even those vegetarian eggrolls you like that I still find completely disgusting." He let out a nonchalant breath of laughter and turned to look at her. Brennan was still in the hallway, making her way back from the front door so slowly, her expression so absent, that it almost looked as though she'd forgotten how to walk.

Booth inclined his head toward her inquisitively. "Everything okay?" He questioned, keeping his voice light.

Brennan's eyes, which had been staring fixedly at some invisible point around Booth's knees, suddenly snapped up to his face, her features composing themselves into a smooth, innocent attentiveness. "Yeah, fine," she repeated for what felt like the thousandth time today, the words sounding less true with each assertion.

Booth's eyes narrowed and he studied her quizzically for a long moment, taking in the forced openness of her face, her wide, unblinking stare, as though there were something she wished she could communicate without the use of words. "Bones, you're doing that thing again where you try to tell me something using only your eyes," he informed her earnestly. "You know you're not good at that –"

"Oh!" Brennan closed her eyes tightly and shook her head, suddenly self-conscious, a light-hearted smile brightening her features. "No, sorry. I was just…" she paused to take a breath, stalling for time to think. Then she motioned casually to her laptop situated on the coffee table under the Chinese food, "…talking to Cam about the case and I guess I'm still a bit distracted, that's all. But I'm –"

"Fine," Booth finished for her, his voice darkening slightly as he nodded at her. "Yeah, you said." A tense silence hung suspended between them for a moment while Booth thought about this, trying to decide whether it was a line of inquiry worth pursuing. Finally coming to some kind of reasonable – to him – conclusion about picking his battles, he smoothed over his own features again and, taking a deep breath, pointed with both hands toward the kitchen. "I'll get the plates?" He proposed spryly, and without waiting for an answer, dashed off in the direction of the doorway.

Brennan watched him go. "Uh…sure," she managed, not caring much whether or not he heard her.

"Why don't you start unloading?" Booth's voice suggested from the kitchen. "Make sure everything's there. You know how the Mandarin House always gives ridiculous amounts of extra plum sauce but forgets the fried rice…."

Unable to come up with anything better to do, Brennan lowered herself wordlessly onto the couch and started extracting Styrofoam containers of mu shoo pork and sweet and sour sauce.

In the kitchen, Booth fired a cautionary glance over one shoulder as he stepped out of the line of sight of the doorway, at the same time fishing Brennan's UV flashlight out of the pocket of his pants, where it had remained since their balcony encounter earlier that day. He worked to sustain the conversation to keep Brennan from getting suspicious while he clicked it on and shone the blue beam toward the floor, sweeping over the tile as quickly and thoroughly as he thought he could manage without missing anything. "So did Cam have anything new for us?" He called as he glanced the blue beam over her stove, the crevices around the bottom of her fridge and counters.

"What?" Brennan's tone was vague again, and her constant preoccupation was beginning to make him nervous.

"Any new information about the case," he clarified, directing the flashlight at the baseboards instead in hopes of having better luck.

"Oh…um…no. She just wanted to let us know they're going to run some tests and then release the body for burial."

"…Okay," Booth replied without having really listened. Now his was the absent tone as he tried shining the flashlight in another corner. Then another one. No matter where he looked, in whatever part of the room, it was always the same thing. He tried under the sink – she said she had been doing dishes at the time – and then by the door where he knew she kept her cooking knives. Nothing. He hadn't even realized he'd stopped talking until Brennan's voice, startlingly closer than it had been a moment ago, nearly made him jump out of his skin.

"Are you finding everything okay?" Her tall, slender form appeared in the doorway, her expression freezing when her sapphire eyes fell upon the forensic light in his hand. "What are you doing?" She posed the question casually enough, her tone not quite accusing as of yet. "Is that my flashlight?"

He'd turned to look at her, his own features deadpan as he clicked off the light without moving any other muscle in his body. Brennan thought, for the briefest of moments, that he looked like some kind of antiquated statue. Caught in the act, he decided to lay the cards frankly on the table. "There's no blood on your floor," he stated simply, and in his tone she _was _able to detect accusation.

Brennan blinked, taken aback. "What?"

"Not a trace," Booth went on, as though he expected her to be fully caught up by now. "You said you injured yourself washing the dishes and yet," he shrugged theatrically, the sudden movement making Brennan jump, "no blood."

Brennan's dark brows knitted together in obvious discontent. Something flashed behind her eyes that Booth had only ever seen on very scarce occasions before; it was fear. The kind of real, candid fear that he'd seen when together they had come across a pool of blood in her apartment so ample it guaranteed the death of whomever it belonged to, and Brennan had been sure it was her brother's. Or the kind of fear he'd seen reflected in her eyes when she appeared from behind that helicopter door to rescue him off of a navy ship that was set to detonate in a matter of minutes. Fear of losing something dear to her, no matter how diligently she avoided admitting it. "I scrubbed it with ammonia," she said after a moment, her voice painstakingly even.

Booth scrutinized her. "All of it?" He challenged. "Bones, a knife wound in the abdomen like that there would have been buckets of blood, and somehow you managed to clean it all. Every last drop. You didn't miss any around the baseboards, or under the stove…" his biting sarcasm stung her, and she was forced to look away. When she failed to answer for any of this he took a step toward her. "You're lying to me, Bones," he reproached scornfully, and she felt a burn under breastbone as though someone had thrust a branding iron through it. "You've never lied to me before. You're terrible at it. Did you really think you could keep me from finding out forever?"

All at once her eyes snapped to his face, wondering exactly how much he already knew. He went on before she could say anything.

"I know you." There was a throaty growl of rage grating his voice, and she had to force herself not to take a step back as he advanced on her further, so their faces were mere inches apart. "I've seen you shoot a man in the leg who was trying to light you on fire," he alluded quietly, dangerously. "I've seen you break a serial killer's wrist and beat up an infamous gangbanger in the elevator lobby of the FBI building." He paused, letting the silence hang precariously over their heads with the weight of an anvil. When he spoke again his voice was so low she almost had to strain to hear it. "You did _not_…slip and fall on a kitchen knife." He articulated the last seven words with a leisureliness that guaranteed his conviction of them. There was nothing she could say to convince him otherwise. This time he really did speak in a whisper; "What are you not telling me?"

Without any warning, there were tears shining in Brennan's eyes, and all at once Booth experienced an inexplicable stitch of self-loathing for having antagonized her so, but it shocked him, too. Brennan was always the strong one. The rational one. Nothing fazed her; not murderers or rapists or perverts or Federal prosecutors. He wasn't accustomed to her having such a low tolerance for provocation, especially from him. Something was evidently much more wrong than he had thought.

He pinned her under a severe gaze, though he was working diligently to soften it. "What?" He persisted, his voice growing desperate as he moved even closer to her. She held her ground but averted her gaze, looking down with her mouth hanging slightly agape as though she were wrestling with words that were screaming to get out. "What is it?" Slowly, tenderly, he brought one hand up between them and coaxed her chin back up on the knuckle of his index finger, raising her face to him. "Come on, it's me. You know you can always tell me anything."

Somehow these words seemed only to upset her more. She drew in a rattling, exasperated breath, her features crumpling as the tears overflowed, trailing over those exquisite cheekbones with all the potential for devastation as a flash flood. It was a moment before he realized she was speaking; her voice was so small he had to ask her to repeat herself. "I-I wish…" she stammered, struggling agonizingly with herself.

"What?" He prompted.

"I wish I could." She shook her head ardently as though she were fighting to clear it. "I wish I could tell you everything…." There was a hurricane of emotions going on inside of her that made her want to climb out of her own skin, a paradox that she couldn't overcome, and couldn't unload on the one person she normally would because he was the only one who could never know.

He took both of her shoulders firmly between his hands. She was sobbing openly now. "You can, Bones. You can. Please, tell me…_who did this to you_?" The more broken he saw her the more badly he wanted to be able to fix it, if she would just let him. "Hey," he moved his hands suddenly from her shoulders to her face, cradling it in his palms with a gentle force that made it impossible for her not to look at him. "Don't you trust me?"

At this appeal Brennan felt something sink irretrievably inside of her. It was the one question she had been hoping beyond hope he wouldn't ask. The only one she couldn't answer, because she couldn't lie. Trust was the whole crux of the matter. As much as she _did _trust him, had _always _trusted him, it was for exactly those reasons that she _couldn't _trust him now, couldn't trust him not to do exactly what she was terrified he might if she told him the truth. Whether she did so or not, however, it seemed to matter little at the moment, for he read it easily behind her eyes. She felt goose bumps rise on her skin where his hands had been as he pulled them away slowly, leaving her cold. He stepped away from her, and she felt a piece of herself go with him. She saw the wall go up behind his features, the utter dejection of realizing it was a question he never should have asked, because he didn't want to know the answer, even if it was an answer he never could have seen coming. "Oh," was all he was able to manage in response, and she could hear the hurt behind it, raw and penetrating as arctic air.

Everything inside of her screamed to correct him, to stop him from experiencing the bitterness of thinking she didn't have confidence in him, to tell him that wasn't it, that _of course _she trusted him and if there was anyone in the world she would divulge this secret too if she could, it would be him. But then she thought it was better that he think that than be privy to the true matter behind her reluctance. He would be safer that way.

Her sobs had come to a standstill, arrested by her anticipation of his reaction. She stared back at him through a watery glaze, waiting. Her eyes stung, but she didn't blink. Finally, Booth seemed to manage to get a hold of something he had been grappling with in his mind. He looked frankly from the floor back up to her tear-stained face. When he spoke, his voice was hardened, frost-bitten. "Fine then." That said, he looked back down at the floor, waiting one more minute as though to make sure he was still intact before he strode forward and brushed past her into the living room, leaving her frozen where she was, bursting from the inside out.

"Booth," she whispered half-heartedly, stifling her own voice so he wouldn't be able to hear it, but it was too late, anyway. A moment later she heard her front door slam. Letting her back fall against the kitchen wall behind her, she slumped to the floor and, burying her face in her hands, finally allowed herself to dissolve completely into tears. ***

Booth slammed his own apartment door behind him harder than he'd intended, but didn't wince as he flung his jacket fervidly over the arm of his sofa. He didn't care if his neighbours heard. He didn't care if the world thought he'd gone off his rocker. Too heated to sit still, he paced the length of his living room with all the energy of an Olympic speed-walker, spanning the distance between the walls in three strides or less. His hands were in his hair for a moment, then the pockets of his pants, then crossed over his chest. He couldn't remember the last time he had been this angry. No, he could. It wasn't all that different from the way he had felt when Hannah had left him, when he'd laid himself bare at her feet and she'd let the guillotine fall.

All these years…after everything they'd been through, and she didn't think she could trust him _now_? What could possibly be at stake that she felt she couldn't even let him _know_ about it? It wasn't as though he were asking for the world; it wasn't as though he were necessarily going to _do _anything. He just wanted her to tell him the truth. Was that really too much to ask? Apparently so.

Finally managing to control his breathing enough to quiet the need to move rapidly from one side of the room to the other, to feel as though he were getting somewhere, he forced his eyes shut and counted, inwardly diffusing the rage. If that was the way she felt, he surmised after a moment, then clearly, there was nothing he could do to change that. Sure, he had taken a bullet for her in the past. He had dug her out of a sooty grave in a quarry in Virginia and shot two men on two separate occasions who'd had weapons poised, ready to render her dead had he not burst in when he had. But he wasn't worthy of knowing her secrets now. This time, she wasn't going to let him fix it.

At that moment a surprising thought occurred to him; he didn't care. He didn't care whether she thought he was good enough to look out for her anymore or whether she trusted him to have her back the way he always had. He didn't know why she didn't, but all at once it didn't matter. All that mattered was that he find a way to figure out exactly what was going on, so that he _could _do something. All that mattered was that she was safe.

Assuaging himself as much as he could with this consideration, he collapsed back onto his couch with a fragmenting sigh, feeling the boil in his blood abate to a simmer, then, gradually, a warm, flat-surfaced stillness. He would figure out who was after her. He would make sure nothing ever happened to her again under his watch. She was his responsibility, after all. She had always been his responsibility. Glancing offhandedly to his left, Booth noticed for the first time that the message light was blinking on his answering machine. Grateful for a distraction, he reached over and pressed the playback button.

"You have-one-new-message," the mechanic female voice on his voicemail informed him. "Sent-today-at-five-fifty-two, PM." He had been at the Mandarin House. "Booth," a deep-throated, baritone voice addressed him over the machine that made his blood turn to ice in his veins, the slow burn starting up again in his chest, a sleeping volcano beginning to stir. "I was just calling to make sure you got my message."

"Loud and clear," Booth murmured under his breath, even though he knew Brodsky couldn't hear him.

"I'd hate to see you lose your partner over a lack of communication."

Booth froze. That wasn't what he'd been expecting at all. He had assumed Brodsky had been referring to the Templeton case. _Collateral Damage_, he had said. What the hell was he talking about now? He looked at the machine, waiting for Brodsky to continue.

"She's a fine woman, that scientist. A valuable crime-fighter. It would be a shame if anything happened to her. The world needs more people like her to dispose of people like Roark." Roark had been the serial killer judge Templeton had let walk. Brodsky sighed into the phone as though it aggrieved him to say what he had to next. "But, as I've said before, Booth, it's all about collateral damage. The ends justify the means." Then his voice hardened, unabashed. "Don't think I won't try again. If you value Temprance Brennan's life you'll call off the dogs ASAP, understand? Let go of my case, Booth. We both know who's going to win in the end, anyway." There was a subtle click and the line went dead, replaced by the robotic recording voice again; "End of message. To reply to it-press one, to save…."

Booth didn't listen to the rest. He was staring fixedly into his hands, unaware of the answering machine's condescending directions, unaware of the room around him, unaware, even, of his own breathing. The world had come to a standstill. Nothing moved, nothing breathed. Everything hung in limbo, waiting to see what he would do next. Inside his head, a flurry of action was taking place, every cell, every neuron firing overtime to come up with a solution. He could hear the gears turning, the cogs grinding scrupulously and, barely audible above all this industrious racket, the faintest of clicks as the puzzle pieces finally fit together.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: The Wedge**

Brennan strode through the front entrance of the Jeffersonian the following morning with the air of someone crashing out of a burning building into a cool, clean, smoke-free atmosphere, choking in the freshness for all it was worth, though of course in her case it was a much more composed, dignified escape. She stepped toward the lab platform with her head held high on her slender neck, her pace measuredly even, her features stony.

It had been an uncharacteristically long time before she had been able to pull herself together enough to get up off the kitchen floor the night before. It was an entirely novel, foreign experience for her; usually she was much better at compartmentalizing than that. She should have been able to compose herself, turn her attention to something else, either resolving the matter objectively or at least pushing it to the back burner of her mind until she could, and resume her evening routine as usual. Why hadn't she been able to? What was it this time that made it so difficult for her to concentrate on anything besides Booth, and the Brodsky case? From an entirely speculative perspective one might guess that she was experiencing stirrings in the very darkest, most unknowable corners of consciousness, that she couldn't discern precisely what they were or from whence they were coming, but that something as deeply innate (and subject to debate) as her intuition seemed to be telling her that something was coming, something much bigger and much worse than anything she and Booth had endured together before. Bigger even, somehow, than death. An ending. But Brennan didn't believe in speculation. And she certainly didn't guess.

Whatever the reason, ruminating on the matter had kept her awake most of the night, tossing and turning between her sheets in a feverish, exhausted wide-awakeness. It was well-past two AM when she finally managed to put a name to that tumbling sensation she was experiencing over and over again in her gut, that irritating buzz in the back of her skull that kept her from focusing on anything else; it was fear. A fear that she had never known before because it was irrational. She had no idea where it was coming from or what it was for. All she knew was that something was making her very, very anxious. She only wished she knew why.

Which was why it was such an immense relief – almost to the point of becoming physical – to return to work the following morning. To return to a place where anomalies always added up to some sort of reasonable solution, where one and one always equalled two, no matter which angle you analyzed it from. This was what soothed her, helped her maintain her sanity, always, even in the face of such unfathomable things as human cruelty and murder. These were the things that offered her some form of solace, that were beautiful to her.

There was nothing beautiful, however, or comforting, about the faces she was met with as she stepped onto the lab platform in the heart of the museum, her most trusted place of refuge. Her gait faltered, stuttering to a tentative halt as she caught sight of the expressions on the normally bright, receptive features of Hodgins, Angela, Cam and Vincent. They were congregated around some remains on one of the lab tables – the bones were ancient and polished; whatever they were working on, it wasn't urgent – and upon her approach they rounded on her with a uniformity that was almost spooky, all of their eyes looking shocked and reproachful, scandalized, even.

Brennan didn't have to ask what the problem was. Looking down at her feet, she drew in a deep, resigned sigh, stealing herself as she crossed both arms over her chest in an undeniably defensive stance. "Booth told you." It wasn't a question.

"How could he not?" Hodgins challenged, the first to jump on the bandwagon. "How could _you _not? _Attacked_? Why in the _hell _would you keep something like that from us!" His pale blue eyes were ablaze with indignation, accusation burning so deep behind them Brennan almost couldn't remember what the typical, loveable, smiling Hodgins looked like.

Forcing herself to take another bracing breath, Brennan composed her response as coolly and diplomatically as she could, wary of not only losing friends in this whole mess, but also of divulging too much information. She didn't know how much Booth had figured out by this point. She knew he knew she hadn't injured herself in a domestic accident, and that clearly someone had intentionally knifed her, but as far as it being Brodsky who was doing it to try and get Booth off his case, she wasn't entirely certain it was safe to divulge such information yet. "I saw no need to worry everyone. I was perfectly capable of handling the situation on my own," she answered slowly, dedicating to every word careful consideration before she dismissed it from her lips. "I've got people working on the case," – it wasn't exactly a lie – "I didn't tell Booth because I didn't want to worry him, either. I knew he would think it was his fault for running off to Israel and maybe he'd even try to catch the attacker. It's not in his nature do just sit back and do nothing when someone he's close to is threatened and I didn't want anyone else getting hurt." She took a pause and swallowed. "That's why Cam and I thought it was best not to –"

"Cam!" Hodgins parroted, the heat in his tone spiking suddenly as he rounded on his boss. "You knew about this!"

Cam was standing as far back from the fray as she physically could be, the small of her back leaning against the railing of the platform while she assumed a stance not unlike Brennan's – arms folded, face inclined toward the ground. When Hodgins confronted her, however, she raised her chin unabashedly and levelled his gaze with her own. "I stitched her up," she offered sufficiently in response. Then she looked at Brennan, her face relinquishing some of its composure for severity. "And don't you drag me into this," she commanded vehemently. "You were the one who wanted to keep it a secret from everyone. I advised you to have some faith in your friends."

Hodgins' ginger-curled head snapped so quickly between Cam and Brennan that it almost left a cartoon trail of his facial features in its wake. "It's a conspiracy!" He declared, throwing both arms theatrically into the air.

"Hodgins," Angela interjected suddenly, prompting him to turn his husky eyes on her. "Shut up." His hands dropped back down by his sides, his expression only slightly crestfallen, and Angela turned to address her best friend. "Sweetie," she implored in a gentle, almost pitying voice, tilting her head to one side and shaking it to convey her bewilderment, "why didn't you feel you could trust us? Have we ever done anything to let you down before?"

Brennan bypassed the second question, going straight for the heart of the matter. "I knew if I told you, the first thing you would do was run straight to Booth," She contended, her voice beginning to rise, the control breaking apart like an ice raft under the heat of a challenge.

"Of course we would have," Vincent chimed in, prompting Brennan to scoff loudly and roll her eyes, her previous assertion confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt. Vincent ploughed on, disregarding her. "Dr. Brennan, perhaps as your intern it's not my place to say – and believe me I'm more inclined to remain in your good books than any of the others – but I value your company as a trusted ally of mutual passions and principles – that is, a friend – first, and a co-worker, or my professional superior, rather," he amended quickly at the chastening look she fired him, "second. I would be interminably devastated if anything should…should prevent us from working together."

There was a beat of silence during which Brennan squinted at Vincent as though he'd sprouted a second head, Angela and Cam both stared at him through wide, unblinking eyes as though they'd never seen him before, and Hodgins turned to look at him with the kind of awed reverie that he normally reserved for winged anthropods. "Dude," he breathed in a low voice. "That was brave."

Brennan looked more harassed than ever. "_What!_" She demanded, her voice leaping up an octave as she spread her arms questioningly in one abrupt, spasmodic motion.

"He cares about you, Sweetie," Angela amended, her own voice growing sterner. "We all do. We want to do anything we can to help…."

Brennan's eyes flashed. "Yeah, well, thank you, Ange, but I can take care of myself," Brennan retorted with the kind of tactless belligerence that often went hand-in-hand with her temper when it reached boiling point. "If I wanted your help I would have asked for it."

"Okay," Angela raised both hands, palms facing Brennan as she dropped her gaze and retreated into herself, working to swallow the realization that the discussion had swelled to unwarranted heights. "That's it. Come with me." She strode forward and gripped Brennan's hand in her own, towing her friend behind her with a force that left no room for argument as she led them both down off of the lab platform and into her office off the hall, where they would have an opportunity for privacy. Once they'd reached the middle of the room, she squared herself so she was facing Brennan head-on, her expression defiant. "Something's not adding up here," she asserted in a low but firm voice, crossing her arms over her chest and pinning Brennan with a dogged gaze. Brennan had seen that look before. It was Angela's most vehement _concerned-best-friend _look. "First, someone attacks you out of the blue with a knife – tries to kill you in cold blood. Now, I know you've made some enemies over the years Brennan – how could you not working with Booth? – but that's just a bit over the top, don't you think? Then," she was counting off Brennan's missteps on her fingers, her tone growing more and more incredulous with each tick, "you go to Cam, _Cam_ for medical attention when you should have gone straight to the hospital. And _on top of all that_," Angela was near hysterics now, gesturing her arms in a dramatic way that suddenly reminded Brennan of Hodgins, "you decide to keep it a _secret _from the rest of us because _you didn't want to worry us!" _Her voice reached a pitch nearing exclusive bat accessibility as she air-quoted the last six words. "I can't believe I'm about to say this, Brennan, but I agree with Hodgins; this is a conspiracy. Something else is going on here and don't think I won't find out what it is. I know you too well not to." Angela paused, letting out a fuming breath while she shook her head in flagrant mystification. "Why wouldn't you feel you could come to us about this?" She asked then, her voice softening. "Don't you trust us?"

Utterly fed up with hearing that question, now Brennan was the one to fly off the handle, her already short fuse finally burning to its end. "Why is everyone so convinced of the fact that this is a trust issue?" She demanded. "Why can't they just accept that I am a fully grown, physically adept, educated woman who is more than capable of looking out for herself? I'm so sick of everyone treating me as though I'm some kind of invalid with extensive brain damage that requires me to be constantly taken care of!"

Angela raised two slighted, perfectly-sculpted eyebrows, mentally backpedalling. "Okay, as slightly offensive and politically incorrect as _that _was," she countered wryly before sobering and levelling Brennan with a critical gaze. "Sweetie, I know you've got this whole independent, autonomous, self-sufficient, woman-of-her-own-universe thing going for you, and believe me, I respect that. I wish I could be like that, but that's no reason to shut the people you can count on out of your life when you actually need them –"

"I don't need –" Brennan started to protest but Angela held up both hands arrestingly.

"Please, just let me finish, okay?" She implored, her voice gentle. Brennan straightened, closing her mouth pointedly while Angela swallowed in preparation to continue. "You're my best friend. I don't know what I would do if anything were to happen to you. That's how we all feel. That's what Vincent was trying to say in his own quirky, English, academically-acceptable way. _Please_, just do me a favour and be careful, okay? Whatever's going on, I don't care if you don't want to let me in on it so long as you promise me you _are _going to look out for yourself. I don't want to lose you."

Throughout this entire speech Brennan had felt her anger gradually assuaging, her features softening as she looked at the only other person she had ever considered close enough to her to be her sister, in a purely social sense of the word, of course. She could see – thanks to years of experience with Booth – how genuinely upset she was by the wideness of her dark eyes, the bundle of creases in her normally smooth brow, the restless set of her jaw and the way she kept swallowing nervously around breaks in her sentences. She wasn't just vexed at Brennan; she was sincerely terrified of losing her.

Extending one arm a bit awkwardly in a way she wasn't used to doing, Brennan laid a placating hand on her friend's elbow, looking at her through commiserative eyes. "Oh, Ange…" she half-whispered, her voice breaking a bit.

"And do me one more favour, okay?" Angela piped up again in a brave voice before Brennan could say anything else. She levelled her again with an even gaze. "Whatever this thing is," she said slowly, "whatever's going on with you and this mystery knife assailant guy, I don't care if you don't want to tell me, but let Booth in on it."

Brennan's features went stony again. "Ange-"

"I know what you're going to say," Angela interjected softly. "But maybe you shouldn't paint Booth as the over-protective, trigger-happy white knight just yet. Please, _for once_ give him the benefit of the doubt and just let him do what he does best; let him take care of things."

At this Brennan looked slightly apologetic, but resolute. "I told you –" she began again, for what felt like the thousandth time before Angela cut her off.

"I know. You don't need to be taken care of, but trust me when I say that you'll feel a million times better, like a huge weight's been lifted off your shoulders when you talk to Booth. Let him help you. You know he would. It's killing him that you're shutting him out."

Brennan pretended to consider this for a moment, looking down at the floor as she shuffled her feet pensively. "I don't want to see Booth," she told Angela truthfully, suddenly finding herself unexpectedly prepared to divulge a full recount of everything that had happened between them the night before, for catharsis' sake, if nothing else.

"Well, that's too bad," Angela responded before Brennan could continue, "because he's standing right behind you."

Brennan's features stiffened and her back went rigid as though all at once she could feel Booth's shrewd brown eyes penetrating the spot on her spine right between her shoulder blades. Not slowly, she spun on her heel to face him, meeting his gaze diligently and matching the fortitude in it with her own. Lately it felt like every time she came face-to-face with Booth it was a competition, some kind of twisted game of Capture the Flag in which one player was constantly trying to see how much information he could apprehend from his opponent, who was guarding it with maddening tenacity. She had always been competitive with Booth. It was an integral part of their working relationship, and she had to admit a part which she normally enjoyed very much, but something about it this time just wasn't fun anymore. This time it was serious and she didn't like it. She felt like it was putting distance between them.

Booth was standing in the open doorway of Angela's office, broad shoulders slumped dishearteningly, hands buried in the pockets of his black suit pants. He looked tired, and for a moment Brennan wondered if he hadn't gotten any more sleep than she had last night. "Let's go for a drive," he suggested, the distinct coldness in his voice making it impossible for Brennan to pretend he hadn't heard what she had just been telling Angela. Brennan remained where she was for a moment, stealing herself, then she nodded once tightly and, without a word and without even coming close to looking Booth in the eye, she stepped forward and followed him out of the office, following a marked three paces behind him all the way out to the car.

He didn't say anything as they both climbed in and buckled their seatbelts. Brennan could feel the silence stretched thin, tight enough to slice through a jugular between them as Booth put the car in gear and pulled out of his parking spot in front of the Jeffersonian. If it had been anyone other than Booth she might have even found herself concerned as they drove away from the building, aimless, him granting her no indication of where they were going. She hated this. Hated every minute millisecond of the muteness between them that was so deafeningly loud in and of itself, a hush that was teeming with so many things to be said, all of them seething just beneath the surface.

After fifteen minutes, Brennan found she couldn't stand it any longer. She had never had Booth's commendable aptitude for patience. "Do…you wanna talk," she asked slowly, working to sound casual, "or were you planning on an across-state-lines abduction?"

He shot her a dark, humourless look.

"Because," she added hastily, unfazed, "as you've so duly pointed out, you've seen me in close-combat confrontation before. You know I can take you."

His glare got even blacker. "You know, Bones, sarcasm really isn't your forte," he rejoindered wryly. Without another word, he took one hand off the wheel and stretched it toward his belt, unholstering his cell phone and holding it up between them. Pressing a few buttons with his thumb, he kept his eyes trained disciplinedly on the road as he spoke his next words. "You wanna tell me what the hell this is?" He proposed a second later, his voice dangerously low as his dialling finger touched down on the speaker phone button. Crackling out through the small hand-held between them, sounding blaringly loud in the former silence, was a recording from his own home answering machine that he'd apparently either forwarded to his cell or dialled his home number to play for them. Either way the means of which he'd obtained it hardly seemed to matter as Brennan felt her heart plunge into her stomach at the unmistakable voice that carried forth into the car, towing along in its wake the termination of any hope she'd still had for keeping this secret from Booth.

"Booth," Brodsky began, malicious and tantalizing even in a recording, "I was just calling to make sure you got my message. I would hate to see you lose your partner over a lack of communication. She's a fine woman, that scientist. A valuable crime-fighter. It would be a shame if anything happened to her. The world needs more people like her to dispose of people like Roark. But, as I've said before, Booth, it's all about collateral damage. The ends justify the means. Don't think I won't try again. If you value Temprance Brennan's life you'll call off the dogs ASAP, understand? Let go of my case, Booth. We both know who's going to win in the end, anyway." The irrevocable click and dead flat line of the dial tone hung between them for a long moment like an execution, the finality of capital punishment.

Brennan couldn't bring herself to look Booth in the eye. He put the phone away and focused his attention on driving, staking her out, waiting, as he was so used to doing, for her to make the first move. "I thought…" she began tightly, but Booth cut her off with an explosion of a calibre she didn't know he was capable of.

"No, Bones, you didn't think!" He countered proactively, characteristically jumping the gun. "For once you didn't use your head at all, did you? You could have been killed!"

"It wasn't my fault, Booth!" Brennan leapt to her own defense. "I didn't _ask _for Brodsky to send out a hit on me!"

Booth was firing back a retort before the words had even finished leaving her lips. "No, but you should have told me," he argued quickly in a quieter voice.

"I thought if I did you would walk right into Brodsky's trap," Brennan explained hastily before Booth could interrupt again, her tone retreating to a more rational degree. But Booth's reaction to this wasn't what she'd been hoping for.

"Oh, that's great," he snapped back, sarcasm dripping from his every word like venom. "Thanks for the vote of confidence there, Bones."

But she was already fighting back, combative to the bone. "I was trying to protect you!" She defended ardently. Then, in a calmer voice, "You're the one who told me partners do anything for each other. 'I'd die for you, I'd kill for you'. That's what you said."

Booth came back promptly, a response already waiting on his lips. "Yeah, well, there's a bit of a double-standard there, Bones," he told her, his temper rising again. "It's my _job _to protect you. I _never_, not _once _in all the years we've been working together, asked you to do the same for me." He lowered his voice then nearly to a whisper. "I never wanted you to die for me."

Brennan withdrew a little at this, stung by the injustice of it. "That makes no sense," she asserted quietly after a moment, shaking her head with a dark smile as she turned to look out the window.

Booth sighed heavily, tiring. "Yeah, well, not everything has to make sense to be true," he contended softly. Then he drew in a deep breath and, rearranging his features, picked up on another note. "The FBI pulled up a match on Brodsky's apprentice," he informed her a bit too formally. "His name's Hugh Medina. He's a twenty-six-year-old con artist who's apparently aspiring to make it in with the big guns. He has a record of mob and gang alliances, drug trafficking, book-keeping, you name it. He's been arrested on charges of both attempted rape and attempted murder." Booth looked pointedly over at Brennan across the front seat, inching his sunglasses down on his nose so he could peer over them at her. "He's not a man we want to underestimate," he murmured heavily.

Brennan looked back out the window, looking slightly disgruntled. "I've dealt with him before," she muttered under the pretence that she was speaking solely to herself, just loud enough for Booth to be granted the privilege of overhearing. "I can do it again."

"No, Bones!" Booth's voice rose up like a tide, alarmed and insistent beyond all measure, drawing her wide blue eyes back to his face. "Listen, I don't want you anywhere near this guy, okay?"

Brennan raised both hands in protest. "But you've got your hands full with Brodsky," she argued, trying to sound reasonable. "I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed to assist in the arrest, too. I'm just as much a part of this as you are. Besides, that's what we do, Booth. You and me, we work together to catch bad guys. _Together_. A _team_. Don't you want me to –?"

"No, Bones," there was a razor edge to Booth's voice as he answered. "I don't." He looked back at her again from the driver's seat, his brown eyes blazing behind his sunglasses. "Not this time. Just let me handle both Brodsky and Medina, okay? For once in your life just stay out of it." He turned his gaze back to the road, and for a moment Brennan thought she witnessed a shadow cross over his features. Then it was gone, but not before she had a chance to identify it as a potent cocktail of fear and pain. Feeling her eyes on his face, Booth found himself speaking again as though she'd drawn the words from him. This time his voice was tender and barely above a whisper while he kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, the words feeling like white hot acid as they blistered their way up his throat and into his mouth. "You could have been killed," he reiterated for the second time, though with a melange of different meaning, as though he himself were hearing this concept for the first time, struggling to imagine if it had been realized. The very idea tore him apart from the inside out.

Suddenly uncomfortable with the raw nakedness of Booth's tone, Brennan pulled her probing gaze away from his face, turning first to look out the windshield, then out the passenger's side window one more time, completely at a loss for what to say in response to that. Normally Booth would have been the one to set her straight on such socially unorthodox situations; he always knew exactly how to handle any conversation the way a fire juggler negotiates his torches, gracefully keeping the flames from ever once licking the ground or any of the surrounding spectators while he twirled them in the air, expertly navigating the mine field with both poise and tact. As he'd pointed out to her earlier, this was not her forte. She'd never been good at handling any kind of uncomfortable social situation; in fact it was normally she who caused them in the first place. Luckily this had never been a problem throughout the duration of her partnership with Booth because she'd always felt she could speak with him openly; she felt he understood her issues with appropriate conduct and appreciated them as being purely superficial. He'd always known she wasn't nearly as cold and distant on the inside as she seemed at first glance. He knew she had a good heart. He knew her for who she was, so she never worried about facing judgment or criticism from him as she did so many other people. She trusted him to recognize her mistakes when she made them, and decipher from them instead what she'd meant to say underneath. It was one of the reasons she'd stuck so diligently by him all these years, through pain and death and differences, and it was the reason it hurt her so much now to feel him repelling her – magnetically, almost – to a safe distance now. The distance kept her in the dark, kept the truth of his thought processes out of her reach, and frightened her into feeling there was a chance she might lose him, the only one who'd ever truly understood her.

As though the ensuing silence was a toxic gas filling the front seat of the car around them, and sound was the only thing that could dilute it, Booth mercifully reached for the radio dial on the dashboard, surfing through the channels until he found one that had a song that was just drawing to a close. "_…And that was the classic Footloose by Kenny Loggins_," the D.J.'s smooth voice pronounced as the song faded artfully away into nothingness. "_Stay tuned as our Flashback to the 80's afternoon continues next…"_

Closely following this came the opening twangs of _Girls Just Wanna Have Fun_, the introductory notes of the melody sounding like a gunshot as they crashed out of the dashboard and into the front seat with the lethal force of a bullet propelled by nostalgia. As Cyndi Lauper caught the pick-up of the lyrics, all Booth was able to hear was Brennan's voice covering the same words years ago, melodiously beautiful, skilfully-pitched, deadly. An image flashed through his mind of her standing on the karaoke stage, absorbed in the electricity of the performance, a musical high, her voice soaring, her arms raised over her head in a kind of theatrical crescendo, leaving her body chillingly vulnerable. He remembered the gun being raised, the sting of the bullet, Bones leaning over him when he fell. He remembered staring up at her, unblinking, terrified to close his yes, trying to make sure that if he died, the last thing he would see was her face….

"_I come home in the morning light_," the song began, and Brennan, feeling her insides seize up like vegetables that had been boiling and then dunked in an ice bath, reached forward and switched off the radio, cutting off the music before they could hear any more. It occurred to her how she used to love that song. How, every time she heard it, she once had been bombarded with sweet remembrances of her mother, telling her she sang it better as a fanciful fifteen-year-old than Cyndi Lauper herself. Now, though, she found the only memory it evoked for her was that of Booth standing up out of his chair in front of her. She could hear the explosion of the gunshot, feel the shock all over again as she watched his body jolt and stagger back into the stage steps, falling into her waiting arms, punctured by the bullet that had been meant for her.

"I hate that song," she grumbled by way of explanation as she clicked off the radio, dousing them once again in heady silence.

Booth kept his eyes fixed on the road, his knuckles white on the wheel and his features deadpan. "Yeah," he half-whispered airily in reply, his gaze miles – or in this case years – away. "Me too." ***

"Brodsky?" Angela echoed for what felt like the thousandth time, her black-brown eyes wide and doe-like as she cradled Michael a little closer against her chest, looking across the clean lab table at Cam. Brennan was attacked by _Brodsky_?"

Cam had decided it was safe, now, to divulge the whole story, given how much Booth already knew and how much he was bound to find out in the next couple of hours. Not to mention the rest of the team had grown suspicious enough to annoy her to the ends of the earth until she told them what she knew. "Well, technically it's Brodsky's apprentice," Cam corrected matter-of-factly. "If Brodsky himself had gone after her Brennan would be dead by this point."

At this Hodgins let out a slightly sickened breath and shook his head, causing his ginger curls to sway drunkenly from side to side. "What the hell was she thinking?" He murmured half to himself under his breath, his blue eyes distant as though he were trying, fruitlessly, to trail his boss' thought process.

"She was thinking she would try and make Brodsky's plan backfire on him by having the success of it stop with her. She knew running to Booth would be exactly what Brodsky wanted," Cam explained perfunctorily.

"That's still what she should have done," Angela piped up then, her voice vehement.

Cam looked stranded. "I know this," she replied hastily. "I told her this."

"I mean the only time I've ever seen Brennan lie," Angela continued, her eyes growing distant as she mentally spanned the years, shifting Michael a little in her arms, "was to the FBI, and that was _to save Booth_."

Cam drew in a breath. "Ah, yes," she sighed, sounding a bit forlorn. "It's all about Booth, isn't it? Brodsky is trying to take Booth out for trying to take _him _out, and he's doing it through the people Booth cares about. Meanwhile one of the only people in the world Booth would give his life to protect is putting hers on the line to protect _him _from trying to protect _her_…." Cam's voice trailed off pensively and her eyes glazed over under the intricacy of it all, the paradox. Ultimately the only resolution she was able to draw from any of it with any certainty was the fact that she was so sick of being the babysitter over the entire mess, the sole confidante and proprietor of all sides of untainted truth, that it was beginning to make her feel physically beaten down, like soon her small frame wouldn't be able to carry the weight of it all any longer.

Angela's voice was thin and willowy when she spoke again. "They care about each other so much it's tearing them apart," she surmised distantly, her tone thick with the sound of her heart breaking.

There was a beat of comprehension during which the rest of the team was clearly working to untangle the whole situation in their minds, and then Hodgins finally doubled over under the weight of it, dropping his head down onto the lab table on the cushion of his forearms, exhausted from the effort of trying to work out a calculation that was beyond even him. "God," he wailed in a muffled voice, "this is so messed _up_."

"What is?" The pure, cavalier voice that elbowed its way into the conversation then with a kind of diffusing casual oblivion caused them all to look up.

Sweets was standing in the lobby just below the lab platform, still dressed in the whimsical orange-and yellow patterned swim trunks and Jimmy Buffet T-shirt that had "_It's five o'clock somewhere" _printed across its front that he'd worn for most of the past couple of weeks in Cancun, a duffle bag leaden with souvenirs dangling from one hand. His face was sunburned and had raccoon-like white bands around his eyes where his sunglasses had been. To the rest of them, though, he might as well have been illuminated by the light of the divine saviour, announced in his advent by a cosmic chorus of _Hallelujah_.

Upon seeing him, the team exchanged a weighty look and then Cam descended the platform stairs at a brisk pace, her arms outstretched robotically as though she herself had no control over them as they clamped themselves around the narrow, wiry span of Sweet's shoulders. "O…kay," he stammered in evident shock, dropping the duffle bag on the floor as her vice-like embrace prized it out of his grasp.

After a moment Cam stepped back, but didn't let go of Sweets, holding him instead at arm's length and pinning him with a severe gaze. "Where the _hell _have you been?" ***

Booth was sitting at his desk in the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building, thumbing through reviewed file after reviewed file concerning the Brodsky case, but without really seeing any of it this time. At one point ten minutes passed during which he failed to notice he'd been staring at the same line of police report without having any idea what it said. He closed the file and closed his eyes, shifting forward in his office chair and perching one elbow on his desktop so he could pinch the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, suppressing the headache that was coming on as a result of the same thoughts ricocheting around the inside of his brain with ruthless force. The same memories. The same conversation.

He hadn't seen or heard from Bones in over two days, and he knew, being the stubborn, proud woman that she was, there was no way she would be the one to break that streak. He hated that he'd lost his temper with her, hated that he'd had to come at her on the offensive, antagonistic, hostile. It wasn't who he was for the most part and he loathed and regretted that side of him when it came out. But, as Brennan would say, he was a typical anthropological example of alpha-male ideals, which meant that essentially for him, fear translated directly into anger before he was even really aware of it. Truth be told he _was _afraid. Afraid he could have come home to something much worse when he'd arrived back from Israel, afraid he could have lost his partner forever on account of him being too soft-hearted to have taken a killer down when he'd had the chance, afraid of who he might have become then. The fact that such a possibility had come so close to being realized was utterly, nauseatingly terrifying for him, and the only thing he could think of that had any chance of calming him down when this happened was the assurance that he would make sure something was done about it. What he was going to do, though, exactly, he hadn't quite managed to work out yet.

A sharp knock on his office door jolted him from his reverie and he looked up, visibly starting in his seat at the sight of his occupational psychologist on the other side of the glass panelling. It was as though the universe had personally selected the one person Booth wanted to see least in the world, picked him up out of the tiki hut he'd been vacationing in in Mexico, and plopped him down deliberately right outside his office.

"Agent Booth?" Sweets poked his curly dark head in around the glass door, as though Booth couldn't already see the rest of him perfectly. "May I come in?"

Booth didn't even blink before he rejoindered; "If I say no, will you go away?" He questioned flatly without missing a beat.

Sweets pretended to think about this. "Not a chance," he replied finally, his voice casual.

Booth nodded once resignedly. "Didn't think so."

Taking that as an invitation, Sweets stepped lithely over the office threshold, closing the door behind him before he seated himself comfortably in one of the desk chairs opposite Booth. He relaxed into the backrest and drew in a deep, contented breath as one might do when they walk into the sumptuous, sweet-selling air of a bakeshop. His interminably chipper demeanour did nothing to improve Booth's attitude at him being there. "You know, under these circumstances," Sweets began cheerily after letting a moment pass during which Booth failed to address him again in any way, "a socially acceptable thing to say would be something along the lines of: 'Gee, it's good to see you, Sweets! How was your trip to Cancun?"

Booth shot Sweets a look of death across his desk. "What if I don't care?" He fired back icily.

Sweets tilted his head in mild inquisitiveness. "Why so touchy, Booth?" He queried, keeping his voice light and unthreatening.

Booth snorted humourlessly. "Why?" He reiterated, sounding scornful. "Oh, gee, I don't know. It couldn't be because there's a twisted ex-sniper/murderer out there hunting down innocent people on _my _account and I didn't even know about it up 'till now, all of which I assume you already know otherwise you wouldn't be here. And now that I do know there's nothing I can think of to do about it anyway, except everything I'm already doing which obvious isn't enough…."

Sweets pressed forward eagerly in his chair. "Ooh," he cooed, his black eyes sparkling, "this is good; just jump right into it."

Booth looked at him then and backpedalled, holding up one hand to indicate he didn't wish the conversation to go any further. "You know what, Sweets?" His tone thinned as though he were already drained. "I'm not going to discuss this with you now."

Sweets sat back in his chair, his expression unreadable. "Fine," he replied, spreading his hands acquiescently as he levelled Booth with a measured gaze. "Whenever you're ready. Take as much time as you need."

Booth started to nod appreciatively, but stopped halfway through when he realized Sweets was making no move to get up. At his quizzically-raised eyebrow, Sweets shrugged. "Ten or even twenty minutes if you need it," he tacked on, doing an obnoxious impersonation of nonchalance. When Booth looked at him again with obvious indignation, he sobered. "Oh, I'm sorry," he mirrored Booth's dryness back at him. "Were you planning to wait until Brodsky attacks someone else? Or God forbid you or Dr. Brennan gets sniped off the street?"

Booth blinked, his features stony. When he spoke he did so slowly, choosing each word with careful deliberation. "I don't know," he said, "what I can do to fix it."

Sweets eyed him over his fingertips as he tented them in front of his face. "That must be very difficult for you," he remarked evenly. "You, a man who prides himself on taking care of others, of keeping them out of harm's way –"

"It's my _job_, Sweets," Booth sat forward suddenly in his chair, his voice low and forceful. "After the army I decided to dedicate myself to _saving _lives instead of taking them. I swore if I could help it, I would never be responsible for another innocent death again. I would never be _that guy _again. And now…"

"Now that past is…_literally _coming back to haunt you," Sweets postulated coolly. "You feel responsible for the threats on Dr. Brennan's life because it's through her ties to you that Brodsky wants her dead."

Booth drew back a bit, defensive. "It's…not just her…" he ascertained feebly, in a voice that was garishly unconvincing.

Sweets was bullet-proof in his response. "Yes it is," he asserted heatedly, pointing a knowing index finger at Booth over the desk. "See, this is _exactly _why when I was assigned to you two three years ago I advised you to be wary of a personal relationship. Personal relationships in high-risk professional settings _do not work _and can even be a hazard for precisely this reason! They provide a window of assault for enemies and they saddle you with a weakness and responsibility you otherwise wouldn't have. For six years she's the one person you felt you had to protect, no matter what. The one person it was your _responsibility _to protect, come hell or high water. You want nothing more now than to be with her, to watch over her day in and day out twenty-four/seven, but you're paralyzed by the paradox that for once that's exactly what you can't do, because it's because of you that she's in danger in the first place, be in inadvertently or not. As long as she's with you, she isn't safe. If it weren't for you, she never would have gotten into any trouble at all. If you weren't in her life, Brodsky would have no reason whatsoever to threaten her."

In that moment Booth felt all the maddening processes inside his mind come to a grinding halt, a single, stark light bulb coming on where before there had merely been a thousand, dizzying strobes. All at once he was grateful that Sweets had come, for as belittling and unasked-for and offensive as his evaluation had been, it had also been infinitely helpful; it had provided for him the answer he'd been so desperately looking for. Because of their conversation, he now knew exactly what had to be done. ***

Brennan had spent the entire day at the Jeffersonian, occupying herself hour after hour with the seemingly endless sets of remains held in limbo. There hadn't been any new cases to work on and, while she'd been enjoying the meditative tedium of a comfortable, repeated process, she'd also found herself growing unexpectedly restless. She couldn't deny that part of the reason she'd stuck to the inside of the museum like Velcro from eight in the morning until well after ten at night had something to do with waiting. She had been, pathetically now that she thought about it, expecting something. Some_one. _She would have thought once he found out the truth about the whole situation she wouldn't be able to get rid of Booth long enough to go to the bathroom, but instead the opposite had happened; he'd grown ominously distant, going without seeing or speaking to her for longer stretches of time than she could remember since they'd started working together. And when they _had _interacted, despite her many blatant attempts to engage him, he constantly supplied her with half-hearted, one-word responses. He acted as though he didn't know her, as though her mind was a complete stranger to him, even though of course she knew he could navigate it with his eyes closed, like the layout of his own home. It was as though the entirety of the last six years had never happened, as though they hadn't rescued one another from certain death at the hands of Heather Taffet, as though they'd never gone for a celebratory drink after the conviction of a killer they'd helped catch, as though they'd never posed as a married couple under cover, as though they hadn't been there for one another during some of their most personal trials, as though they hadn't been spending the majority of their lives together.

Brennan didn't like it. It was a terribly dark and worrying feeling. It gave her the sensation that she was falling, like something was slipping away from her that she wouldn't be able to go on without, at least not without changing her life drastically, which she didn't want to do. Once again, she had the premonition of an ending looming on the horizon, something her subconscious was screaming for her to steer around, only she didn't yet know what it was.

The only explanation she could think of for such an unexpected reversal of character in Booth was that perhaps she'd made a bigger mistake than she'd thought; perhaps lying to him _had _been worse than putting both of their lives in more danger. Logically, she didn't see how, but Booth could, and at this point she thought that was all that mattered. She just wanted things to go back to the way they were before. She wanted her job back. The one that had defined her for the past six years. She wanted the person back who'd given that to her, and everything else he'd brought with him. She wanted her best friend back. Of course, she would never tell him any of this. She couldn't. It wasn't in her nature to be self-deprecating, the weakling. She was independent. She was a survivor. She always had been, and she didn't need anyone else to validate that. If Booth wanted to be a child like always and freeze her out and give her the silent treatment then that was fine with her. She'd tried to justify herself, tried to reason with him, but there was no reasoning with Booth when his temper – not to mention his emotions – got involved. All he saw was what he felt, in both his gut and his heart, and that wasn't always rational.

She considered all of this as she strode through the parking garage on her way to her car, tidily packing these musings into a separate compartment from the ones that were coolly noting the distinctness of a double footfall echoing behind her, the calm sense of a set of eyes on her back….

"Ready for round two, Medina?" She called cavalierly without looking over her shoulder, stopping where she was in the center lane of the garage. Once she got to her car, if he managed to catch up with her, she would be cornered; there would be no way out. It was best to meet him here, on the open playing field, where there was room to fight, and room to run, if need be. Slowly, she turned around. On the surface, the garage appeared empty; there was no one there. Reaching into her purse, she procured her revolver. After making sure the chamber was full and the hammer was cocked she placed both her bag and her jacket on the cement floor and took a step back in the direction from which she'd come, both the gun and her wits poised. "I didn't do enough damage the first time?" She hollered boldly into the cavernous parking garage, her voice bouncing back at her off of the concrete walls, deceptively solitary. "Thought you'd come back for more?"

Her intimidation tactic worked; Hugh Medina's distinctively wiry blond form appeared from behind one of the cement pillars as though a magician had pulled him out of a hat. He took a step toward her and she raised the gun and fired. Missed. He recoiled back behind the pillar, vaporizing in a shower of concrete dust as the bullet was swallowed by the wall. Brennan dashed for her own pillar, ducking behind and pressing her back against it to ride out the attack.

"Fortified your defense tactics, I see!" Medina's voice was tremulous and slightly derailed as he attempted to mirror Brennan's confidence back at her, unsuccessfully. From her hiding spot, Brennan couldn't help but allow a miniscule, imperious smile to hijack her lips for a moment; the man was a coward. He had no composure in high-stress situations. His criminal record was no match for her experience in the field with Booth, not to mention her uncanny ability to compartmentalize to the point where she could will herself to feel practically nothing under virtually any circumstances. He was no match for her.

"Well, considering Brodsky relies so much on his gun," Brennan shouted back across the garage, her voice infuriatingly steady, "I figured it only fair that I get one too, especially since his is _so much _bigger than mine…" She spun out from behind the pillar again at the same moment Medina did, a mirror image, and fired two more rounds. Both fell short of their target and Medina bolted for another pillar. Brennan got back behind her own. She didn't know what kinds of weapons the apprentice was equipped with, but she wasn't about to take any chances. She heard Medina's voice resounding again from somewhere to her left.

"Brodsky isn't the one hunting you down," he corrected breathlessly. "You're my assignment. And I intend to complete it."

Brennan almost laughed as she looked down to replace the three missing bullets in her revolver. Tossing her hair back confidently, she let the echoes of the garage carry her voice to wherever Medina was hiding. "You can tell your boss I don't do second best!" She called, knowing this was certain to infuriate him; it was a tactic Booth had taught her; get the attacker so worked up all he could see was white, until he could no longer think straight. At that moment, though, Medina abruptly stopped talking, and for the second time tonight Brennan found herself wondering if she'd made a mistake. If she didn't keep him talking, how would she be able to keep track of where he was?

She edged a little closer to the corner of the pillar, wondering if it was safe to peer around it. The air had gone unbreathably thick with silence, the garage around her still. She had one terrifying second of dismay at the realization that Medina had turned to smoke; she had absolutely no idea where he was. Then she was seized by the choking grip of panic in her throat as someone grabbed her from the other side, around the corner of the pillar her back was turned toward, and reeled her around so fast she barely had time to react before he locked the wrist of the hand in which she was holding her gun in a vice grip.

Using the momentum of the spin to gravitate her pursuer around her like some treacherous dance, she hitched her free arm in the crook of his neck and shoulder and kicked his feet out from under him, flattening him to the floor. Unfortunately Medina had an iron grasp and took her down with him, wrenching her body over his so she hit the cement at his side, the gun clattering out of both of their reach. He scrambled for it but she shoved him back down and sprang to her feet, kicking it well out of the range of retrieval – she knew it would have been foolish to try and recover it herself with her center of gravity high and her back turned to Medina – and then rounded back on her attacker, landing a well-aimed kick directly into the center of his face as he clambered forward on his hands and knees. Hardly fazed by the blow, he reached forward with one hand and grabbed her ankle as she made to bolt for her car. She fell.

The next time either of them got to their feet they did so together, Brennan parrying his every attempt to knock her out cold and delivering a good number of hits herself, skilfully targeting the areas she knew to be the most vulnerable; the kidneys, the diaphragm, the groin…. She only finally managed to level Medina with a proficient lock and twist of the fault line she knew was already there – she'd broken it herself the last time they'd had such an encounter. Medina yelped primordially and crumpled to the floor, automatically corkscrewing around onto his front as Brennan knotted his refractured elbow behind his back in an excruciating, pretzel-like fashion.

"You ready to fold, Medina?" She jeered in a strained voice as she held him pinned against the floor, redoubling her hold on his arm every time he tried to make an evasive manoeuvre. "Had enough?" When he didn't answer she wrenched at exactly the wrong angle on his elbow, causing him to shriek in agony. Then she lowered her voice so it sounded subtle, dangerous. "You're never going to be able to do it," she half-whispered in his ear. "If Brodsky wants me he's going to have to come after me himself."

At this Brennan was certain she heard some of Medina's pained garbling consolidate into legible words. "What?" She demanded, slackening her hold on the back of his hair for a moment so he could lift his face up off of the floor enough to talk.

"I said he's got his hands full with other things," Medina repeated, sounding bitter.

"What are you talking about?" Brennan flipped him over, causing him to wince and cry out as she forced his weight onto his own broken arm. When, after a moment Medina failed to divulge anything else, she ground one of her knees into his ribcage, pressing down on the limb twisted behind his back. "Talk!"

"There are other targets!" Medina shrieked hastily, his breath coming in sharpened gasps as his eyes squeezed tightly shut. "Brodsky has other avenues of getting through to your FBI guy!"

"Other targets?" Brennan echoed pensively, her voice wavering inward as she considered this. Then her eyes flashed back to Medina's screwed-up face, blazing with urgency. "Is he planning something else? Who's he going after?" She interrogated, her tone a clear indication that she meant business.

Suddenly Medina's eyes opened and they levelled her with a kind of unsettling, deadly serenity, a calm smile breaking over his features. "Let's just say Brodsky's going public with his next attack; he's going to make sure the entire world knows what a joke the Federal Bureau of Investigation is."

Brennan couldn't help but freeze for a moment under the chilling effect of these words, feeling the fine hairs on the back of her neck rising defensively. Something about the way Medina's lips moulded around the words 'other targets' and 'public' combined with the unwarranted coolness of his demeanour sent off warning bells in her head. Just as she'd somehow intuited, he was giving her the feeling all of this was going to culminate into something much bigger and much worse than she'd anticipated….

She was barely aware of the fact that her brain had apparently snagged on this notion until Medina made a startling effort to get up; heaving all of his weight upward, he caught Brennan uncharacteristically off-guard and threw her on her back, dashing to his own feet and making a break for the door. It was clear he recognized he was outmatched in this situation; he would have to give himself time to regroup, to regain strength in his arm and reconsider his tactics. Brennan sprang for her phone.

"Consider this your lucky break!" Medina called over his shoulder as he ran, causing her fingers to pause in the middle of dialling 9-1-1. "It's the last one you're going to get! Oh, and by the way," he half-turned in the doorway that led to the stairwell. Glancing down, he kicked her revolver back across the parking garage floor toward her. "Next time I'm going to match your firepower." Then, for the second time, Brennan was forced to watch him elude her.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: I'd just like to let everyone know how much I appreciate all the wonderful reviews. It really means a lot that people are getting so into the story, and it's knowing that which encourages me to keep going, so thank you, and keep 'em coming! Any feedback is welcome, constructive criticism included – I'm always looking for opportunities to improve my writing.**

**Chapter 5: The Collapse in the Centre**

"Victim is female," Brennan crouched low over the charred remains of a body in a drainage ditch on the side of the highway. "Early thirties. Pelvic structure indicates maternity…."

"Great," next to Brennan, Cam shook her head darkly. "I hate it when they've got kids."

"So do I," Brennan replied truthfully, without looking up from the blackened corpse. After a moment she grimaced and shook her head, too. "Not all of the injuries I can discern here are resultant of her death," she deduced grimly. "She has a calcified tibia fracture and evidence of reoccurring blunt force trauma to the ulna and radius."

"Defensive wounds?" Cam surmised without missing a beat and Brennan nodded.

"Old ones," she confirmed. "Probably consequent of recurring incidents of domestic violence."

Cam raised her eyebrows in that speculative manner both she and Booth often utilized that drove Brennan up the wall. "Looks like we have our first suspect," she postulated, gazing down at the victim with her arms folded across her chest.

Just then Hodgins piped up from where he was kneeling in the wind-rippled grass on the opposite side of the corpse from Brennan. "Insect activity suggests she's been dead no longer than four days," he informed them soberly, holding up a glass vial teaming with barely-visible organisms in front of his face.

Cam nodded and produced her cell phone from an inside jacket pocket. "I'll tell Angela to check the missing persons data base," she relayed, and started to dial.

Suddenly Brennan straightened to her feet, looking miffed as she glanced about her somewhat uneasily. "Where _is _Booth?" She demanded of no one in particular, sounding vexed. "Shouldn't the FBI be involved in a case like this? Isn't he usually here already?"

Cam turned back to look at her, the phone – apparently still ringing – pressed to her ear. "I already called them, too," she illuminated, "when we got here before them. They said he was on his way."

Brennan raised her eyebrows expectantly at Cam but she could only shrug helplessly and turn her attention back to her phone call, her information having gone as far as it could. For a moment Brennan felt a spasm of concern in the back of her mind; Booth was never late. In fact she couldn't remember a time she'd arrived at, let alone _inspected _and practically _identified _a body before he'd even arrived at the crime scene. They always arrived at the same time, but then, if she was thinking in reasonable terms, they always came together, too.

"Impatient?" Hodgins' probing voice brought her out of her reverie, and she looked down to find his dancing blue eyes on her, alight with intrigue.

Brennan hastily rearranged her features. "No," she rebuffed, returning to kneel beside the body and pretending to work. "No, I just…need to talk to him about something, that's all." The moment the words were off her lips she regretted them. She could literally see the excitement mounting in Hodgins' face and she shot him a reproving look.

"_You _actually want to _see _Booth?" He reiterated in a tone obnoxiously inflected with disbelief. "To have a conversation? As in…face to face?"

Brennan levelled him with an even gaze. "Yes," she confirmed coolly. "What's wrong with that?"

"Wow," Hodgins exclaimed, a slow, impish smile blooming across his lips. "Maybe things are starting to get back to normal."

Brennan consciously lightened her features. "What do you mean?" She challenged casually, delicately scraping at some particulates on the burned clothing.

"Well, you know, since the whole ex-sniper-whacko-apprentice-stabbing-exposé things have been a little…tense between you two."

Brennan kept her eyes trained on the remains. "I have no idea what you mean," she replied evenly, her face smooth as marble as she leaned over the corpse to procure another evidence bag.

"Oh, come on!" Hodgins sounded characteristically scandalized. "You haven't spoken to the man in three days."

Brennan's eyes flickered briefly to Hodgins. "I've spoken to him," she contended a bit defensively, working to keep her tone light.

Hodgins rolled his pale orbs skyward. "Oh sure, grunting," he acknowledged wryly. "Ever since the other day the two of you have been like two of the same magnetic poles; one enters the room and the other bolts like there's a fire in the building. It's no wonder you're anxious to work things out. Fisher and I actually had a pool going to see how long it would last. Looks like he owes me –"

"I don't want to talk to Booth to work things out," Brennan snapped heatedly, her blue eyes flashing as she looked up at Hodgins over the corpse. "I just have some new information for him about the Brodsky case."

At this Hodgins looked pleasurably dubious. "Okay," he allotted slyly, nodding. "Whatever you say…."

Brennan supressed a snarl of frustration as he returned to his job of labelling the insect vials in black Sharpie. She wasn't lying. She really _did _have some new information for Booth concerning Brodsky. Important information. Ever since her encounter with Medina the night before she'd been waiting, none too patiently, for the opportunity to relay everything the apprentice had said, about the public humiliation Brodsky was planning of the FBI, about Brodsky having "other targets" to use to get to Booth besides herself. It had occurred to her that this could potentially surmount to a matter of national security, in which case Booth would have to be informed, no matter how mad at him she was.

As if on cue, Brennan looked up then to see a shiny, black FBI vehicle pulling onto the shoulder of the road off of the highway, its blue and red emergency light flashing behind the tinted windshield. She got to her feet. "Finally!" She breathed, more for her own than anyone else's benefit as she spread her arms in respite and took a step toward the road. She stopped, however, when she realized the suited figure stepping out from behind the open driver's side door was not Booth, but another slick-haired, sun-glassed agent she didn't recognize. Without so much as a nippy greeting, she turned and rounded on Cam, who was just returning while pocketing her cell phone back inside her jacket.

"I thought you said the FBI told you Booth was on his way," she accused crossly, clearly disconcerted.

Cam looked up and her eyes widened guiltlessly as they fell upon the unfamiliar agent. "They said an agent was on the way," she explicated feebly. "I just assumed they were sending Booth." Her voice was thin and airy as though she'd just been bowled over by a hurricane. This was not a situation she or any of the others had ever been faced with before; Booth was always the one who showed up on crime scenes. The shock of it rendered her speechless, which was more than fine – Brennan had enough vocabulary for the two of them.

Turning back to face the FBI agent, she perched both hands imperiously on her slender hips. "Who are you?" She demanded as he made his way toward her, right hand outstretched in a customary North American greeting.

"Uh…Special Agent Lisle Hogarth," he introduced, flinching only slightly under the unwarranted heat of Brennan's question; she might as well have added a 'the hell' between the 'who' and the 'are'. He dropped his hand back to his side, unruffled, when it became clear Brennan had no intention of shaking it. He was dressed exactly like Booth, only without the flamboyant socks and the _Cocky _belt buckle, and his suit was tawny as opposed to black, all of which for some reason made her suspiciously uneasy; he wasn't an unattractive man by any means, with his flippant golden-brown hair and navy green eyes set deep into chiselled features – Angela would have been all over him. He was tall, too. Almost as tall as Booth.

Brennan waited for more, and when he didn't offer it the intolerance in her tone mounted. "Why are you here?" She questioned directly, diplomacy never having been a strongpoint of hers (that was another check in Booth's category).

Hogarth's moss-coloured eyes shifted uncomfortably between Brennan and Cam. They could almost see him shrinking in the daunting shadow of Brennan's interrogation. "I'm the FBI agent assigned to this case," he replied, doing a respectable job at keeping his tone even.

Behind Cam and Brennan, Hodgins had straightened to his feet, bug vials suspended in both hands between the links of his fingers. "Uh, no no no," he said in the belittling tone one used when it was blatantly obvious to them how right they were, and felt it should have been as well to everyone around them. "Booth is the agent assigned to all of our cases. We work for him." Hodgins delivered this information complete with a serene smile, as though he were sure the other agent would be able to find reason in it, but Hogarth merely rocked back a bit on his heels, burying both hands in his tan-coloured suit pockets as though he were slightly miffed by Hodgins' tone.

"Actually," he corrected, assuming a manner of arrogance, "you're contracted out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a government agency as a general murder consultant; we can delegate to you whichever agent or agents we see fit."

Hodgins blinked and reeled back a little in the grass, lost for words and clearly offended. Brennan narrowed her eyes at the man cagily. "Where is Booth?" She asked, again with a bluntness that would have made a cow stagger under its blow.

Hogarth sighed, beginning to accept the fact that he was fighting a losing battle. "Agent Booth renounced his participation in murder investigations in conjunction with the Jeffersonian Institute," he informed them, with the result of three pairs of dramatically widened eyes on his sculpted frame. "From now on I will be the collaborator with whom you work on cases – I belief Sealy referred to the position as 'Dr. Brennan's _partner_'."

There was a ripple of shock through the small chunk of team that was gathered there that was palpable as though a meteor had hit, as though the apocalypse itself was imminent. Cam was the one to break the surreal hush, her voice so low they almost wouldn't have heard it if it hadn't sounded like a gunshot in the utter silence. "Excuse me?" She breathed, sounding genuinely dumbfounded as though she'd just been told the sky was green.

But Hogarth didn't have to repeat the declaration a second time; already Brennan was tearing off her latex gloves in a flurry of impassioned motion, casting them heedlessly to the gravel shoulder as she bent to snatch up her purse, fishing in it for her keys. "Oh, no, no, no," she laughed humourlessly under her breath to no one in particular as she stepped lithely over the burn victim's body and dashed toward her car, perpetuating the intonation as she went, and inflecting the cadence to different pitches with every cycle as though she could give the word more credence if it conveyed a range of emotions; "no, no, _no_, no…NO, _no, _no." Sometimes it was sing-song, others it was surprised or matter-of-fact or ridiculing, and still others it was severe as a heart attack. She was shaking her head darkly as she climbed into the driver's seat, as though there was no possible way there could be any validity in what she had just heard, and if there was she was going to allow it proceed over her own dead body.

Slamming the car door with a fervour that made Hodgins wince, she sped off in a spray of gravel and perplexity that left Cam, Hodgins and the new FBI guy shielding themselves. "Oh, now where is she going!" Hogarth implored, waving an exasperated arm after her zealously, clearly aggravated.

Without really bothering with an answer, Cam pivoted slowly on one heel to look at Hodgins over her shoulder, her expression tight. "Three guesses," she muttered out of the corner of her mouth, primarily for his ears.

Hodgins stared back at her, his blue eyes unseeing, his features fatalistically stoic. "I hope he's wearing a cup," was all he had to say on the matter. ***

Booth more sensed than heard or saw her coming, kind of like a hurricane or tsunami during that ill-omened calm just on the brink of utter destruction. The feeble, florescent-lit hallway of the FBI building seemed to pale in her presence as she bowled through it, barrelling around the corner and through the glass door of Booth's office, chucking it open so forcefully he was afraid it might shatter as it rebounded off the back wall. "What the _hell_, Booth!" She exclaimed, so loudly that it drew gazes from the hallway. He visibly winced. He'd known what he had to do was going to hurt even before he'd done it, but he'd resigned himself to the simple, irrevocable reality that he'd once told Brennan he would do anything for her, and he'd meant it, even if it meant causing her pain to save her life.

He held up both hands, palms facing her pacifyingly. "Okay, now, Bones," he began, his tone a touch patronizing as he looked up at her from under his lashes, wordlessly implying that they both try to keep their heads, but Brennan didn't give him another inch.

"I go to work this morning, get a message that we've got a case, then I arrive at the crime scene to discover that not only are you not there yet, but apparently you're not coming at all!" She illustrated all of this with theatrical flourishes of her upper extremities while she commenced pacing the length of the room, moving with such zeal that Booth realized he would have little – if any – hope of placating her. Even so, he tried.

"Bones, just –" he cringed as she roared back at him, cutting him off a second time.

"Do you have any idea how _humiliating _that was? In front of Cam and Hodgins and the whole investigation team with a body there ready for examination and instead of you showing up some pompous, blond, overdressing pencil-pusher who we've never even met arrives on the scene and tells me he's my new partner!"

"Bones," Booth tried again, a little louder this time.

"What!" She stopped mid-pace and turned to face him, her arms spread indignantly in question, her normally porcelain face blotchy and feverish with outrage.

It occurred to him that he'd never seen her quite this livid before, and, promptly deducing that she was way too far past her rational precincts to be reasoned with, perhaps even dangerously so, he gestured coolly toward the open hallway, where a small crowd was gathering. "Before we get into this would you mind closing the door?" He beseeched instead of what he'd wanted to ask of her, which was to allow him to explain.

"No!" She bellowed in response, sounding even more affronted that he'd even asked.

Booth sat up a little straighter in his chair. "Okay –"

"A new _partner_, Booth?" She thundered on. "How could you do that to me! After all the years we've worked together, after everything we've been through…" in a normal woman Booth would have expected to hear the high pinch of tears in her voice at this point, but not Brennan. She was far too furious for that. "Did it all just mean _nothing _to you!"

Before he was fully aware of his actions Booth was on his feet, his own temper suddenly skyrocketing under the pressure of her boil. "Did it mean nothing to _me_?" He parroted, matching her ferocity unexpectedly with his own. "It obviously meant nothing to _you_! You didn't even tell me when my own perp tried to have you murdered in cold blood!"

"I did that to protect you!" She retorted readily before the words had even finished leaving his mouth.

Booth felt his pulse accelerate, blood pounding a waterfall bass on the inside of his eardrums. "Yeah, well, guess what: you still lied to me, Bones! Okay? You looked me right in the face, and you lied." He stopped to take a breath, his voice wavering ever so slightly as he looked upon the exquisite face he was accusing, the face he would do anything to keep from seeing pain on. "Partners are supposed to be able to trust each other, Bones! They have to always tell one another the truth no matter what, even if it hurts, even if it's dangerous. Trust is the crux of a partnership in law enforcement; if we can't trust one another then we can't be partners!"

She bit back with another ready response, her rage intensifying. "So you're doing this out of _spite_!" She spat in disgust, her voice straining almost to the point of violence.

At this Booth actually laughed, granted it was a grim, humourless laugh invoked purely for the sake of derision, but still a laugh none the less. "Oh, that's great!" he barked wryly, throwing both hands in the air in obvious vexation as he collapsed back into his chair with such force that it rolled back a few feet from his desk. "That's just perfect. I'm glad you know me so well, Bones. Thanks for that, thanks a lot."

Brennan feigned a guiltless shrug. "I thought I _did _know you," she countered nastily, then raised her eyebrows at him and lowered her eyes suggestively, "but now –"

"We're both safer if Brodsky thinks we're not important to each other," he explicated hastily, before she could inflict any more damage. The statement fell between them with the weight of a mastodon; inignorable, crippling. Brennan stopped talking, her features icing over as she uncrossed her arms and took a step back, absorbing the impact of the statement, of what it all meant. Booth was leaning over his desk, looking down at the gray laminate and panting from sheer exertion. "We can't be together," he elaborated, ensuring the message got through this time. The words burned his throat on the way out, made his chest throb ruefully, but they needed to be said. There was nothing more important, not even either of their comforts. "If it weren't for your ties to me, Brodsky would have no reason to go after you." His voice sounded hoarse all of a sudden, a dryness infesting his entire mouth. "I'm the reason you were almost killed." He forced himself to look at her, his face open as a wound. "I've always been the reason you were almost killed." Brennan listened, her features paralyzed. "Being around me is only going to put you in danger."

Brennan snapped out of her reverie so abruptly it made Booth jump and shift his weight back in his chair as she bent over his desk, propping herself on her hands barely a foot from his face. "What if I don't care?" She challenged, her face brazen, her voice low and dangerous. Booth didn't even wait for her to finish the comeback before he denounced it.

"I do," he parried strongly, leaning forward onto his elbows. They stayed like that for a moment, each bent over the desk, faces close to one another, eyes locked in deadly combat. Finally Brennan was the one to straighten up. Crossing her arms over her chest, she expelled a tenacious breath, her jaw set in obvious defiance.

"No," she breathed.

Booth's eyebrows floated toward his hairline. "What?" He blinked in surprise, as though he hadn't heard her correctly.

Brennan's voice was lighter and sounder still as she responded. "No," she repeated simply, shrugging with her crossed arms as though there was very little he could do about it. "I won't do it. I won't abandon our partnership just because things get a little dicey."

Booth raised himself out of his chair again, staring hard at her, the muscles in his face congealing in aggravation. He could feel the tips of his ears beginning to burn. "I'm not asking," he retorted, exerting just about all the energy in his body to keep his voice calm. For once he needed her to just listen to him without any contention. This was important. Why didn't she hold the same value for her life as he did?

This cavalier resilience, however, only seemed to fan Brennan's flame. Up until now she had given rationality an admirable effort, but this time she couldn't help but bark back her response. "It's not your decision, Booth!" She countered angrily. "You have no right –"

"Did you take _my _decision into account when you decided to lie about Brodsky?" he challenged, bringing her up short again.

Brennan's chamber was already full with the next round. Rather than whipping them around in a redundant circle, she decided to bypass the _for-his-well-being _argument and remind him instead of the credit she felt she was due when everything was accounted for. "Do you know why I asked for a gun all those times we moved to detain a potentially dangerous murder suspect?" She questioned fiercely, drawing yet more attention from the hallway with the volume of her voice. "It was never for self-defense, Booth! I wanted it so I could have your back! I've always had your back, because that's what partners do!"

Booth levelled with her abruptly, his temper turning his yell into a roar. "Yeah, well, maybe I don't want you to have my back anymore, Bones!" He bellowed in response, hearing the words tumble forth as though from someone else's mouth. "If it means you putting your life on the line, then I won't have it! I won't let you!" He backpedalled a little then, regrouping. "I got you a new FBI guy," he reasoned, holding up a palm in his own defense. "I'm not your partner anymore, so just back off, okay? We shouldn't see each other anymore." His voice dropped nearly to a whisper. "It's over."

Brennan looked absolutely murderous. Her sapphire eyes resembled the searing interior heat of blue flame, her face a minefield of lethal explosives. "Fine!" She snapped, her voice detached and cutting.

Booth levelled with her gaze. "FINE!"

Brennan expelled another breath, this one resigned, and rocked back slightly on her heels, letting the impact of the blow sink in. When she spoke again her voice was wispy and tremulous, spent, but still fuming. "So…" she breathed, the barricades suddenly crumbling behind her eyes, leaving them tender and vulnerable. She swallowed. "So this is it then." It sounded more like a question than a statement.

Booth sat back down in his chair, spread his arms. "I guess so," he replied in the same shattered, beaten-down voice.

Brennan let her gaze linger on him for another moment, as though she were waiting for something. Waiting for a reason not to do what she did next. When no excuse provided itself to her, she dropped her eyes to the linoleum floor and let out the wry, humourless ghost of a laugh – just one breath, barely audible, almost a sigh. Shaking her head slowly, she pivoted on her heel and made for the door. "Goodbye, Booth," she uttered over one shoulder as she went, just loud enough for him to hear. And then she was gone.

Booth watched her go, the burn in his eyes cooling a bit as she disappeared from his sight, the pain beginning to set in in its stead. He had just lowered his face into the cradle of his hands, elbows perched on his desktop, when the unmistakably throaty voice of Federal Prosecutor, Caroline Julian made him look up again, raising his chin just enough to uncover the top half of his features. "That wasn't Dr. Brennan I heard you hollerin' at?" She ventured bracingly, jerking a thumb over one shoulder in Brennan's wake. Her ample frame was filling the doorway, cradling a bundle of case files under one arm.

Booth let his eyebrows inch up again, his words coming out muffled and airy from behind his hands. "Yeah," he replied in a rattled, willowy voice, as though he himself couldn't bring himself to believe it. "Looks that way."

Caroline let out a low whistle. "You two really got a set of pipes on you when you get goin'," she remarked, eyeing him with a guarded, side-long glance.

Booth closed his eyes over the bridge of his fingers. "You have no idea."

It wasn't as though this was a common occurrence. Booth and Brennan had argued in the past, sure – competitive bickering, a theoretical debate here and there, but as far as full-out _fighting? _They hadn't done that in years. In fact, he could remember having only one brawl with Brennan of this magnitude in the past, and this one had ended considerably better, he had to admit, despite everything; at least she hadn't hit him this time. ***

"He did _what_!" Angela yelped in a gratingly high voice when Brennan recounted the story back at the lab that afternoon. In her arms, baby Michael let out a disapproving shriek and Angela made a conscious effort to temper her tone. Hodgins was there too, foraging for particulates, and Clark Edison, examining X-rays with his back turned.

Brennan talked while she worked, craned over the back-lit cadaver table that currently supported the remains of the 32-year-old burn victim they'd procured from the side of the highway. "He terminated our partnership," she relayed simply, as though Booth had offended her by spilling a glass of orange juice over her desk. Angela recognized that tone; Brennan had reverted to her objective mode, distancing herself from what was happening to her in hopes of making sense of it, and thus perhaps alleviating some of the hurt she was inevitably feeling.

"Can he _do _that?" Angela queried, sounding indignant at the very notion.

"Apparently he can," Brennan answered reasonably, without missing a beat, though she did raise her eyebrows a bit bitterly over the corpse.

Angela shook her head, realizing her best friend had obviously mistaken the emotional context of the question for professional. "No, Sweetie," she amended, her voice softening, "I mean –"

"I know what you meant, Ange," Brennan interrupted, her eyes snapping up unexpectedly from the body. When she spoke again her voice was lower, exhibiting the ghost of a wound. "Apparently he can," she muttered in a half-whisper, speaking mostly to herself.

Angela lowered her gaze to the table, looking crest-fallen. "Well," she began again after a moment of contemplation, a glimmer of hope brightening her voice, ever so slightly, "you told him the fact that Brodsky was after you because of him didn't matter to you, right? You told him the two of you should stick together, no matter what?"

Brennan let out a snarl of frustration. "I tried, but he wouldn't listen," she vented, shaking her head in disgust. "Idiot."

Hodgins looked up from his secondary sweep of the victim's clothing to exchange a shrewd glance with his wife. "It's six years ago," he jeered in response to Brennan's declaration, his eyes dancing around at his surroundings in feigned awe as though the room itself had undergone a temporal warp. "My time machine works!" Angela couldn't help but stifle an appreciative laugh.

Turning back to face them, Dr. Edison raised his eyebrows with the air of a schoolteacher chastising an inattentive student. Or three. "Not to trivialize the scandal of the century," he disclosed dryly, "but do you think it would be possible to focus on the case?"

At this Brennan nodded promptly and dropped her eyes back to the cadaver table as though they'd been bated with fishing weights. "You're absolutely correct, Dr. Edison," she acquiesced diplomatically. "I apologize for being so unprofessional." Returning her attention to the charred remains, she examined the cranial structure with her nose centimeters from the surface of the blackened skull. "Structure of the brow ridge suggests Caucasian" she deduced pensively. "Clothing remains are designer; some of the brand names are still discernable."

"Rich white girl from the suburbs," a silky, silver voice made them all look up as the melodious double-beep of a card swipe at the security clearance resounded over the lab platform. Lisle Hogarth wagged his bronzed head on his way to the table, fancy, light-coloured jacket billowing behind him. "Intriguing."

"Who gave you a security card?" Brennan demanded curtly, straightening from her work with her elbows cocked, soiled gloves held away from her body.

Hogarth regarded her with smug temperance. "Would it kill you to say hello just once?" He challenged blithely, then turned his attention back to the remains, nodding down at them in a way that made his shiny, wet-sand-coloured hair sway like wind-rippled wheat. "So what else have we got here so far, _partner_?" He massaged the last word snugly in his mouth, putting a suggestive spin on it that made Brennan's bones grate.

Snapping off her gloves with unwarranted fervour, she cast them down on the table with the same vexation as she had out on the highway. "You know what?" She addressed him testily, as though his inquiry had been a blatant insult. "I've got other work to do. I've got to go check with Cam about the tox screen. You can work with Dr. Hodgins and Dr. Edison for the rest of the afternoon." There was an edge to her tone as she walked briskly away that clearly identified her displeasure as a direct result of Agent Hogarth's presence. When she was gone he chanced a quizzical glance at the others.

"Hostile, isn't she?" He remarked with an expertly cocked eyebrow, both hands buried in his suit pockets.

Angela offered him one of her tidy, sweet smiles as a consolation prize. "Don't take it personally," she cooed warmly. "She was pretty attached her old partner." She took a step toward him, her dark lashes fluttering over her baby's head. "But, uh…I don't have any former attachments that would cause any such…hang-ups."

Across the table, Hodgins raised his eyes to the ceiling. "Except one," he interjected pointedly, under the pretence of musing quietly to himself, which brought Angela immediately back to the present. ***

"Are you crazy!"

Booth was still at his desk later that evening when Sweets blitzed into his office, making him groan audibly and rock back in his chair so his head was tilted up over the back of it. "Oh, this is all I need," he grumbled, loud enough for Sweets to hear.

The psychologist was sporting a haystack of dark hair, a suit jacket that was hanging askew from one shoulder, and was trailing a snow shower of papers behind him from the stack of file folders he had tucked under one arm. Something told Booth he hadn't wasted much time in getting to him once the news had spread. "You seriously _broke up_ with Dr. Brennan." It wasn't a question, but still there was a search for confirmation behind Sweets' retriever-like black eyes.

Booth threw both hands in the air, not for the first time today. "Why," he bellowed, loud enough for the entire floor to hear, exacerbation reigning supreme in his tone, "is this everyone's concern besides our own?" He levelled Sweets' gaze, feeling a rant beginning to fester at the top of his stomach. "The issue is between me and Bones, okay, Sweets? No, not even that, because it's not an issue! It's done with. It's over. And I did not 'break up' with her," he framed the words in air quotes. "Bones and I were never –"

"You two are meant to be together!" Sweets interjected a bit childishly, waving his file folders in obvious vexation. "You've been partners for years! Your personalities correspond perfectly! You complement one another –"

"_Enough_, Sweets!" Booth barked, irritated by the shrink's efforts. "It's done."

But Sweets wasn't giving up that easily. "What the _hell _put this idea in your head?" He demanded, mystified.

Booth's eyes widened as though he were seeing Sweets for the first time and he had two heads. He leaned forward in his swivel chair. "YOU!" He howled indignantly, his expression accusing. Sweets reeled back as though he'd received an electric shock. "You're the one who told me personal relationships in high-risk professional settings are dangerous and don't work! You said – and I quote – 'if you weren't in her life, Brodsky would have no reason whatsoever to threaten her'!"

Sweets nodded doggedly. "And I stand by that," he parried, hurrying on when Booth raised both hands on the cresting swell of misperception, "but the fact is you _are _in her life, now, Agent Booth. I told you you never should have gotten involved with her in the first place. I never said you should remove yourself from the situation now! Under the circumstances it is absolutely imperative that the two of you stick together!"

Booth's eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hairline. "Why?" He questioned, staring, unblinking back at Sweets.

The shrink rolled his eyes in exasperation as though he were trying to explain quantum calculus to a two-year-old. "Because you _complement _each other," he drawled out repetitiously, as though trying to engrain the concept into Booth's psyche. "You have one another's back. The two of you have relied on each other for so long, you've become like one another's brick wall to stand against when you're pursuing a dangerous perp! Take one of you away, and the other is vulnerable." Sweets collapsed into the office chair opposite Booth, plunking his forearms, up-facing on the desktop. "You're safer together," he asserted in a more level, critical tone. "Apart, you're both sitting ducks."

Booth shook his head obstinately. "I'm sorry, Sweets, but I disagree," he contended, his own voice cooler but adamant. He didn't sound sorry at all. "Since I came into her life Bones has gotten into more life-threatening situations than she ever would have without me."

Sweets pinned him under that shrewd, shrinky stare Booth contested so much. "You don't know that," he challenged, but Booth already had his response ready.

"Oh, yes I do," he maintained with a dark laugh. "Before she met me she'd never discharged a firearm. Now she's killed two people…"

"Both times in your defense!" Sweets leapt this claim with a vehement hunger as though this only served to support his former argument.

"My point exactly!" Booth countered, thumping the top of the desk with one committed index finger. "Do you think I like having that hanging over my head every day? That it's because of me she had to take two human lives? That she might have to take more if we were to remain partners, or lose her own?" He let out an exhausted breath, wiping one palm over his face from his forehead to his chin. "It's time for a change," he said after a moment, his voice low – Sweets thought it sounded a touch wounded. "We had some good times, but it's all fun and games until someone loses a life. I already told her she shouldn't come around me anymore. That until Brodsky's caught, we shouldn't see each other."

Sweets' features brightened a bit when he heard this, his full lips parting. "Until Brodsky's caught," he parroted, weighting the words with a significance Booth hadn't used. "You said that? You said those actual words?"

Booth had to think about this. As much as it pained him, he replayed the entire fight back over in his mind. There were gaps, blind spots when he'd been too angry to pay attention to what either of them was saying, only what it meant…. "Yeah," he answered finally, his voice wafer-thin. "Yeah, I think so." In truth he couldn't remember. He had no idea whether or not he'd specified a time-frame, or even if he'd intended to….

"Look, Sweets," he masked his eyes with the palms of both hands, massaging his retinas in an attempt to quell the headache that had been gnawing at the inside of his skull all day, "it's been a really long day and I just don't want to discuss this anymore right now."

"Okay," Sweets was on his feet before Booth opened his eyes, his tone light and benign. "I'll come back tomorrow, then."

Booth's eyelids flew open. "I've made my decision," he stated heavily, leaving no room for argument.

Sweets eyed him dubiously. "I'll see you tomorrow," was all he said, before gathering his case files up off of Booth's desk and making for the door. As he closed it behind him, he couldn't help but linger a moment to glance back at his long-term client. Booth was hunched over his desk again, broad shoulders stooped, heavily-burdened, forehead and eyes cushioned in the crook of one hand. Sweets felt a hairline fracture fork across his heart as he looked at him; he looked broken. His body language indicated he was experiencing a sense of self-loathing – perhaps even grief – for what he'd done, for what he was _doing_, but also that he didn't know how else to rectify the situation. It was weighing heavily on him, Sweets could see that. It was something he never thought he'd half to do, or at least hoped he wouldn't.

Helpless, Sweets turned away and made his way down the hall, feeling as much as all of them the sense of unease, of certainty that this couldn't possibly be right, no matter what way you looked at it. He had given Booth his honest, emphatic opinion. He didn't know what else he could do. What he _did _know was Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan absolutely _had _to stay together. He'd meant what he said. It was more than a psychologically-educated, analytical prediction; he could feel it in his gut – in his _bones _– that if as long as Booth and Brennan remained separated, they were in more danger than ever. If they stayed apart, something bad was _unquestionably _going to happen. Something very bad.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: Okay, sorry for the delay everybody! I know people really wanted this chapter to come out fast but things got a little crazy at work and I wasn't able to finish as quickly as I'd hoped. Anyway, all lame excuses aside, I know it has mostly been a lot of talk and ominous foreshadowing so far, but I promise you, this is where it starts getting good! So without further ado, enjoy!**

**P.S. *Hint hint* In case no one has figured it out yet, this is basically my version of how 6x22 should have played out ;) **

**Chapter 6: The Break in the Dam**

Another sleepless night had rendered Brennan virtually catatonic as she made her way through the front entrance of the Jeffersonian the following morning. Once again she'd failed to effectively compartmentalize her problems. Her argument with Booth had kaleidoscoped over and over again in her head, line by line, as she lay awake staring at her bedroom ceiling for hours. It was true what they said about hind-sight being 20-20, as much as she hated metaphors; looking back on it, she could think of a million things she should of said in response to his accusations and didn't. A million things she wished she _hadn't _said. She'd thought her adamant display of resilience, of loyalty to their partnership was something Booth would have respected. Evidently she was wrong. His final words to her resounded over and over in her recollections, a haunting echo; _We shouldn't see each other anymore_, he'd said. _It's over. _It's over. For some reason the words sounded foreign in her sleep-deprived brain, as if they were from another dialect she couldn't decipher. Perhaps because she couldn't help wondering what exactly they had meant. Did 'over' encompass all ranges of present and future tense? Or had what Booth intended to say been 'over for now'? She dared not let herself hope. It had certainly sounded like 'over', period. But that couldn't have been what he had meant. Could it? Considering this possibility (_probability, _it seemed more like), she suddenly felt a throb of sadness she never would have expected to have room for around all the anger that was still boiling in her stomach. A pang of…could it be regret? She was too tired to tell. Even so it seemed she couldn't stop herself from thinking about it, no matter how cyclical and fruitless the ruminations were.

Besides that there was an annoying itch around the edges of her subconscious that told her there was something else concerning Booth she should be turning her attention to. She had the distinct, unshakable feeling that she was forgetting something….

On top of everything, car trouble had kept her from getting to work on time this morning. Hodgins, Angela and Vincent were already gathered around one of the tables atop the forensic platform, Hodgins relaying something to Mr. Nigel-Murray concerning the flesh-eating beetles they'd used to clean the bones of their latest murder victim – something about their stomach contents being unusually acidic after they'd fed – and Angela waiting for access to do a facial reconstruction.

"Wow." Hodgins turned toward Brennan as she card-swiped herself through the security boundary with that proverbial double-beep. "You look like crap."

Brennan fired him a cautionary glare but did not stop walking as she approached the cadaver table and scooped up the file clipboard in the crook of her elbow. "Thank you, Dr. Hodgins," she replied evenly, her tone less ironic than it was taken aback; her exhaustion was inevitably having a detrimental effect on her wit.

Angela looked up at her from under a cloud of concern. "Hogarth was here and gone an hour ago," she relayed guardedly, a question underlying in the statement.

Brennan yawned. "Well, I'm sorry I missed him," she retorted sardonically, her voice thick around the bulb of air.

Angela took in the sight of her friend with a grain of unease. She was moving slower than usual, her silky, seal hair cascading out of a haphazard knot at the back of her head, her eyes not nearly as wide and ready as they normally were when she came into the lab in the morning. "Did you get _any _sleep last night?" Angela drawled, squinting at her friend's face as though she barely recognized it.

Brennan opened her mouth to respond but before she could a second female voice – this one clearly indignant – made her turn around. "Dr. Brennan!" Cam's head was poking out of her open office door. It emerged further, tailed closely by the rest of her body. "Where the hell have you been?" She demanded, crossing both toned arms across her chest and approaching the forensic platform. It wasn't so much a shirking of work as a general concern for her friend and employee that made Cam so curt; Brennan was never late. For anything.

Brennan squared her gaze with Cam's. "I ran out of gas," she told her truthfully, which prompted Cam to give a startled little inward buck of the chin, her full brows knitting together disconcertedly. This was even more unusual than Brennan coming in late for work. "You…never run out of gas," Cam stated somewhat redundantly as though this something they didn't all already know, shooting Brennan a critical sidelong glance.

Brennan's retort was like a gunshot; "Well, I did this morning," she bit back, feeling a swell of tired irritation at the interrogation. Part of her testiness, she was sure, could be attributed to the fact that the one person she normally would have called to come pick her up in such a predicament was currently and indefinitely out of her reach, through no choice of her own, she'd endeavour to add. That and the current deficiency of caffeine that was coursing through her bloodstream. Deciding this line of thought was a safer course to pursue than the former, she unruffled herself as best she could, forcing a deep, cleansing breath through her respiratory system and straightening the weary kinks in her spine. She looked at Cam a bit judiciously. "Is there coffee in the staff lounge?" She inquired, as reasonably as she could.

Cam nodded but did not take her analytical eyes off of Dr. Brennan. "A fresh pot ten minutes ago."

Brennan promptly descended the steps of the forensic platform, nodding tightly. "That is satisfactory," she muttered on her way past Cam, whose gaze followed her until she'd disappeared through the doorway to the lounge down the hall, then snapped up to exchange wordless communications with the rest of the team.

Brennan breathed in the aroma of fresh-filtered grounds and made a bee-line for the cupboard, where she procured a Fred-Flintstone-calibre yellow mug. She was just in the process of lifting the pot and pouring the steaming brew when yet another voice startled her from behind.

"Dr. Brennan!"

She nearly overshot her mug. "God, Sweets!" She exclaimed, clearly vexed as she placed the coffee down on the counter and half-turned to face him, hands braced against the counter top as though to keep her from falling. It took her a moment to steady her breathing. When she did she managed to find her voice again long enough to reprimand him like a small child; "You're a psychologist! You should know better than to sneak up on people like that."

Sweets didn't advance on her but stood coolly in the doorway, burying his hands to his pockets in a very aloof, non-threatening gesture while his head tilted ever so subtly in her direction, mildly intrigued. "You've been a bit jumpy lately, Dr. Brennan," he observed, keeping his voice objective.

She let her eyes roll skyward. "I wonder why that could be," she parried wryly, straightening from the countertop to a more dignified full height.

Sweets removed one hand from his pockets and raised an insightful index finger in her direction, taking a step toward her as he did so. "Sarcasm," he perceived in that incriminating tone that never quite managed to shake either Booth or Brennan, only annoy them. "A clear sign of stress, of highly-raised defenses." He cocked a patronizing eyebrow. "You wanna talk about it?"

"No." The word jumped readily from her lips, confidently cool as she blew past him back out into the hall, half-filled coffee mug in hand. Half-filled mug, mostly empty gas tank; it seemed she couldn't manage a full stock of anything today.

Sweets scurried after her, his manner much less composed, open suit jacket flapping behind him. "Are you sure?" He beseeched. "Because often times conflict with a loved –"

She fired him a cautionary glare.

"With someone you've been emotionally close to for a very long time can subconsciously affect one's ability to function on a routine, day-to-day level. It can be classified as an actual mental condition, somewhere proximate to the category of post-traumatic-stress disorder. Symptoms include sleep deprivation, avoidance of the person or issue at hand, trouble concentrating, irritability, trouble remembering things, increased reaction to being startled…all of which I have to point out you are displaying and if that doesn't have a detrimental effect on your work abilities I don't know what –"

"Sweets!" Brennan came up short just outside her office and turned on one heel to face him, the low level of coffee in her mug swishing almost close to the brim. "I'm really not inclined to discuss this with you at this point in time. What are you doing here anyway? Booth isn't here…."

Sweets tried to look astute in the face of wrath. "Well," he replied evenly. "I am an FBI psychologist, and since you are, after all, an FBI consultant," he hitched his shoulders in a shrug of simplicity, "I figure that falls under my jurisdiction, no matter which agent you're working with." Sweets' eyes turned puppy-like. "Please, Dr. Brennan," he begged, bringing his hands together, straight-fingered in front of his chin and doing his best as-a-personal-favour expression. His voice had softened considerably, the 'shrinky' – as Booth would have referred to it – charade falling flat on its face to reveal a young professional in need of personal validation. "Booth totally snubbed me when I tried to give him my evaluation of the situation last night. I could really use this to get some of my mojo back."

Brennan eyed him dubiously, her expression deadpan. "Mojo," she echoed, dipping her chin to blink up at him from under her lashes.

Sweets flicked his eyes between both of Dr. Brennan's. They stung from the effort not to blink. If she detected even the slightest indication of false pretence in his face, she was almost certain not to accept the help she needed. "Y-yes…" Sweets confirmed slowly. "My mojo."

Brennan cracked a small smile. "Well, as long as it's about your 'mojo'," she chuckled, turning and leading him into his office.

Sweets sent up a silent prayer of thanks and followed her. "I assure you it is."

She seated herself behind her desk and sobered abruptly. "And we don't talk about Booth," she conditioned flatly.

Sweets' triumph faltered a bit. He hovered for a beat over the chair across from her, hesitant. "If we can't talk about Booth," he reasoned, "then what –"

Brennan shrugged with an assumed air of nonchalance. "Brodsky," she suggested lightly. "Medina? My attacks?"

Sweets leaned forward in his chair. "Attack –_s_?" He emphasized. "Plural?"

Brennan sighed. "Why don't we just have a session centered around the fact that I was once again placed into a life-threatening situation as a direct result of a high-risk career in collaboration with law enforcement?" She proposed rationally.

Sweets considered this for a moment then proceeded to collect himself, repositioning his seat in the chair and clearing his throat while he straightened the sides of his jacket. "Alright," he replied evenly, sobering. "If that's what you want, then that's what we'll do."

Brennan floated a leery brow at him. "Promise?" She questioned a bit tenderly. "No talking about Booth?"

Sweets shook his head firmly. "No talking about Booth."***

_Ten minutes later…._

"Agent Booth has been a key facet in your day-to-day life now for, what? Six years?" Sweets estimated with a noncommittal shrug, appraising Dr. Brennan from across her desk.

Brennan nodded, expression open. "Approximately," she amended.

"He's been the person you've spent the most time with collectively out of anyone else. He knows your strengths, your vulnerabilities, your pitfalls – basically the light and dark of your personality, right down to the shadiest corners; why did you feel you had to keep something like this from him?" Sweets proffered the question innocently enough, but still he noticed Brennan draw herself up in her chair, a harassed expression boiling up behind her features.

"Why does everyone just assume that telling Booth was the right thing to do from the very beginning?" She demanded, raising both hands in the air in a beseeching gesture. Sweets shook his head and raised a placating hand, but she ploughed on before he could say a word of consolation. "Can no one see that doing so was only going to endanger more lives than it had to if I'd just kept it to myself? Not to mention it would have caused Booth a great deal of unnecessary distress!"

Sweets looked at her from under half-closed eyes, ankle perched on one knee and hands tented before his face. "It's Agent Booth's responsibility to protect you," he reconciled evenly.

This didn't seem to appease Brennan in the least. "That's what he said!" She assented, clearly perturbed as she tossed him a stranded wave. "But I don't understand why that excuse only applies to him. He can risk his life for me, but I can't do the same for him? It's illogical. Why does everyone immediately assume I'm the one who needs protecting? Is it because I'm a woman?" She demanded this was such an air of offense that Sweets felt he had to at least try to appease her.

"No –" He began but Brennan cut him off.

"Booth knows what I'm capable of; I've saved his life on multiple occasions before and he's expressed nothing but gratitude as a result. I don't see why he should be getting so bent out of shape about it this time…" She left the question dangling between them for Sweets to take up.

He ruminated on it for half a beat. "Maybe because this time you deliberately put your own life in jeopardy in place of his," he posited reflectively, the look in his eyes turning inward while the wheels turned in his brain. Then he steepled both index fingers, lowering the rest to make a double-fist as another thought occurred to him. "How did you feel three years ago when Agent Booth placed himself in the path of a bullet that was meant for you?" He queried curiously, as though these were circumstances he had yet to come across in his professional lifetime and was devoting careful scrutiny to how they were going to play out.

Brennan looked as though she herself had been shot in that moment of questioning. She blinked and swallowed hard before answering. "Angry," she breathed earnestly, her voice more candid than ever before as she looked back on that dreadful day and felt a raw stab of injustice.

Sweets waited a minute. "Because…?" he prompted.

"Because it should have been me!" Brennan exploded, feeling the unexpected sting of tears at the backs of her eyes. "The gun was aimed at me. That woman never meant to hurt Booth; I could see the regret in her face when she realized what she'd done. I had been right there in front of her, a sitting duck. I should have been paying more attention! I should have…" Brennan's voice began to trail off as the anguish of the memory constricted her throat. She dropped her gaze to the desktop, shaking her head as though she wished she alter past reality that way. "If he'd just stayed sitting down," she managed finally, her voice breaking. "Why didn't he just stay sitting down? What was he thinking? He knew what was going to happen." She looked back up at Sweets, her blue eyes beseeching and glazed over with tears.

The psychologist shifted forward in his chair, detecting a break-through. "So," he pursued a new line of inquiry, blazing the trail haltingly as he went, "you're angry with Agent Booth, because he intentionally and with full consciousness of the personal ramifications, placed his own life on the line for the sole purpose of saving yours." It wasn't a question but another observation. "So angry that the next time you saw him alive you punched him in the face."

Brennan's features brightened. "Yes!" She exclaimed, looking relieved that someone finally seemed to understand. "Although, part of that aggression was also a result of the fact that I thought he'd neglected to notify me his death had been faked, but I have to admit most of it was carry-over frustration with Booth for putting himself in that position in the first place. He shouldn't have done that."

Sweets fixed her with a convicting gaze. "And you can't see why he's angry with you now for putting yourself in the same position?" He queried pointedly.

Brennan was quiet for a moment, digesting this. "It's no reason to end our partnership," she offered a bit feebly, evading the question when she realized she couldn't trump it.

"Why did that hurt you so much?" Sweets altered tactics.

Brennan looked up at him, swiping at a tear with her fingertips before it even made it past her cheekbone. "I don't know," she answered honestly, her voice choked.

Sweets leaned forward further, elbows on knees. "Is it maybe because…you're experiencing a sense of betrayal?" He posited.

Once again Brennan's eyes grew round and Sweets swore he saw something ping behind them; he'd hit his mark. "Booth promised he would never betray me," she segued meditatively, her voice barely above a whisper as she looked back on it, pain constricting her tone so it was almost uncomfortable to listen to.

Sweets caught another scent. "So…" he postulated slowly, thinking between words, "it's become a matter of trust for the both of you. After so much time working together, you expected more from each other. Better."

Brennan cradled her temple in one palm, shaking her forehead against the heel of her hand in readable exhaustion. "God," she breathed, "I never would have cared about this six years ago."

Sweets shrugged. "Maybe it hurts more now because your feelings for Agent Booth have evolved," he suggested coolly.

Brennan raised her head. "I know that's why," she concurred ardently. She grimaced as though she'd swallowed something bitter. "This is why you should never invest yourself in another person," she asserted suddenly, her tone solidifying. "I never should have let myself get that involved. I should have remained impervious like I always was. I knew it wasn't me to feel such things. I should have been more rational."

Sweets held her pinned under his gaze, unblinking, sensing another triumph. "Are you saying Booth changed you?" He questioned, careful not to display too much excitement in his voice.

Brennan offered a noncommittal shrug in response. "Booth is always changing me. I've learned a lot from him since we started working together."

Sweets floated his eyebrows. "Have you ever told him that?" He asked. When Brennan didn't say anything in response he tried another tack. "Dr. Brennan, can I ask," he started down another, very diplomatic road, "why were you so determined with Brodsky, to ensure Booth's safety?"

Brennan sidled her eyes, pretending to think. "Because…I didn't want anything to happen to him," she responded slowly, in a flat tone that suggested this should have been childishly obvious.

Sweets wasn't fazed. "Why not?" He returned without missing a beat.

At this Brennan's composure wavered a little. "Because I care about him," she answered a bit guardedly. "We're partners."

Sweets nodded. "Mmhmm," he said, stringing her along. "And what else?"

Brennan cracked a wary smile, eyeing Sweets with a side-long glance. "What do you mean, 'what else'?"

Sweets could see he was going to have to connect the dots here. For a brilliant, world-renowned scientist, Dr. Brennan could really be quite dense sometimes. "What do you feel when you imagine losing Agent Booth?" He probed gently. "When you think of him having to experience unnecessary pain?"

Brennan's eyes tightened. "I feel…" her voice hitched as she struggled to adequately describe the sensation. "Like my heart's being ripped out. Like I would do anything to stop it. Like it's me going through it and not him."

"Like you're a part of him," Sweets surmised for her, providing the words she was looking for.

Though she felt the distinct impression that she shouldn't be, Brennan found herself nodding.

Sweets pressed even further forward in his chair, his dark eyes intensifying. This would be the crux of the session. She'd never been this open with him before about her feelings. If he could get her to answer this one question, he would never have to worry about beating a path into her subconscious again. All the answers would be out in the open. Everything that had caused this whole mess, and everything that was going to fix it. He'd turned into the home stretch. "What do you feel," he posed carefully, working hard to keep his voice steady, "_for _Agent Booth?"

Brennan thought about this for a long time. She could feel an itch around the edges of her subconscious, a wall threatening to come down. It was a sensation similar to that of standing on the edge of a precipice, ready to jump, with no way of knowing what waited for you down below. "I like him very much," she answered finally, deciding that although it _was _a cop-out, at least it was true, but Sweets wasn't letting her off that easily.

His gaze was unwavering, his expression certain. "Is that all?"

Suddenly Brennan had a flash in her mind back to a case she and Booth had worked not too long ago when he'd still been dating Hannah - the remains of a couple found in a National Park cave, who'd evidently died in one another's arms. Afterwards, when the killer had been caught, she and Booth had discussed the mythic and elusive powers of love over drinks back at the Founding Fathers; _"So," Brennan surmised ironically after Booth had finished explaining why he thought both people had died unnecessarily instead of just one, "you're saying that love is foolish and illogical."_

_ "No," Booth had argued. "It's thinking of someone before yourself. It's giving your life, if necessary, to that person." He'd shrugged, as though the significance of the definition was intrinsic and therefore required no further explanation. "It's love." _Remembering this, Brennan's breath caught. It's love.

Although for a long time Brennan said nothing in response, her silence communicated more. She swallowed hard, feeling cornered. Pegged. She never should have consented Sweets to evaluate her, should have been more stringent about their agreement not to discuss Booth. After a moment though, Sweets surprised her by leaning back in his chair, crossing his ankle over his knee and spreading his arms once more over the armrests on either side of him, relaxing. Brennan had seen this gesture from him many times before; it was indicative of the end of a session. Before standing up to dismiss himself from her office, Sweets had but one more piece of advice for her. Squaring her gaze firmly with his own, he offered her the same piece of advice her friends had been trying to get her to hear ever since her decision to hide her involvement with Brodsky from Booth; "You have to tell him." Only this time it was in reference to something much, much different. ***

Brennan ruminated on Sweets' advice for the remainder of the morning and well into the afternoon. She absently went through three more cups of coffee, nearly emptying a two-ounce bottle of peroxide into one of them instead of creamer, checking her e-mail four times on her computer in her office before she registered the fact that she had no new messages, and staring at the digitized facial reconstruction Angela had done on their burn victim for a full fifty-five seconds before she managed to make the shrewd, highly-trained observation: "She's blond."

Angela turned to look at her as though she'd just announced she was going to vomit. "Sweetie, maybe you should go home," she suggested, her expression guarded as she eyed her friend. She looked even more tired than she had this morning, and now she wasn't paying attention to _anything_.

"I'm fine," Brennan lied with a promptness that was beginning to feel quite natural to her. She regrouped. "Why don't you run the image through your facial recognition program and see if you can find a match in the Missing Persons Database?" She proposed, gesturing to the computer screen.

The worry-lines in Angela's face deepened. "Yeah," she agreed haltingly. "I was just going to do that."

"Good." Brennan nodded tightly and turned on her heel to leave Angela's office, heading back out toward the forensics platform. As difficult and maddeningly sluggish as this distraction was making her job, she was eager to identify the victim and perhaps even get a hit on a few suspects before Hogarth turned up again. Given the circumstances he was the last person she desired to see at the moment, and even less a person she desired to spend any unnecessary time with. She had a feeling the low tolerance for ignorance she normally ran on was now merely operating on fumes.

She couldn't help but wonder if Sweets had a point; as much as she despised the idea of relinquishing her pride on the matter, and as much as she _really _didn't want to see Booth at the moment, she did. A part of her wanted to talk to him, wanted to converse and banter and confer about life the way they used to. They way she'd regrettably come to _rely upon_. And although she'd already banished Sweets' final assessment to the deepest, most secreted corner of her subconscious, she thought that at the very least, she _should _try to find him to tell him that she was sorry. He deserved that much, despite everything. As angry as Booth had made her, as much as she'd wanted to pop him one for the third time since they'd met, her conversation with Sweets had softened her again toward him immensely. Talking about her feelings concerning Booth had made her remember _why _she felt them. All of the good times she didn't want to do an injustice to. Everything he'd done for her. Looking back on it all, she found they're quarrel concerning her life to suddenly seem childishly insignificant.

She knew what she had to do, just didn't know when or how to do it. Should she wait until tomorrow? Try and find Booth as soon as possible? The pressure of indecision was knocking on her consciousness the entire time she was trying to work, making concentrating for more than five seconds virtually impossible. What if something crucial depended on them re-establishing contact? She still had a feeling she had something important to tell him the last time they were together, if only she could remember what it was…. She remembered what Booth had told her, knew for a fact he wouldn't approve of her trying to communicate with him again, but at the moment she could see no other alternative. What he had to know had to come from her and her alone. No one else would be able to relay to Booth the depth of what she had to say.

She worked well into the afternoon, the deliberation flipping back and forth an inordinate amount of times in her mind. She was painfully aware of the clock pressing into the pre-evening hours, cutting the time she had left to decide short. It was fortunate she _wasn't _in her full mental capacity at the moment or she would have also been aware of how many times one of her friends had advised her to go home, referring to her as though she were a flu-stricken school child.

She was on her way back to the forensics platform, Angela's facial reconstruction images in hand when she nearly collided with a flourish of wet-sand-coloured hair and gem-stone-green eyes. "Oh, God," she grimaced, sounding disgusted as she leapt back, raising the file folder to cover her heart. "You again."

At this third rather discourteous greeting Hogarth decided not to comment, settling for a jaded sigh instead. He was beginning to grow accustomed to it. "It's lovely to see you Dr. Brennan," Hogarth nodded his crest of honey hair in her direction in a kind of chivalrous bow, hands, characteristically, in pockets. "I hope you're doing well." His green eyes gave her a slick once-over, taking in her tired features and dishevelled wardrobe a bit dubiously.

"You know," as usual Brennan's tone was coming out a note more brusque than was socially bearable, "it really isn't strictly necessary for you to be on the premises to check in with us," she informed him matter-of-factly, with a prick of objection. She shouldered past him and kept walking toward the platform as though he'd never blocked her path in the first place.

Hogarth followed closely, hitching his shoulders in his patented, cavalier shrug. "I like to take a personal interest in the murder cases I've been assigned to," he replied, the sarcasm in his voice light as a vapour, barely detectable. "Keeps things fresh."

Brennan eyed him measuredly over one shoulder while she walked. "Are you sure it's the murder victim you're taking a personal interest in," she challenged brazenly, "or some other asset the Jeffersonian has to offer?"

At this Hogarth cocked a negating half-smile, as though amused by the mere inference. "You flatter yourself, Dr. Brennan," he parried haughtily. "You certainly are a stunning specimen and I'll admit when I first drove up to the crime scene I was already scripting in my head how best to approach a dinner invitation, but it was mere seconds after you opened that razor-tongued trap of yours that I deduced you'd be more likely to eat me alive than invite me up to your apartment for coffee."

Brennan's gait faltered as she swiped herself through security and moved up the platform steps, her gaze blistering as she turned two wide, repulsed teal eyes on Hogarth. "Is this your way of trying to get me to like you, Agent Hogarth?" She demanded, feeling her still-simmering temper come back up readily to a boil. "Because if it is I feel the necessity to enlighten you to the fact that your sense of egotism really is disproportional to –"

"Hey, look what I found!" Suddenly Mr. Nigel-Murray was rushing them from aside one of the cadaver tables, a distinct air of intentional diffusion about him as he waved a pair of forensic forceps over his head. Forever the compartmentalizer, Brennan turned her attention seamlessly from Hogarth to the evidence her intern was holding out to her. "It's a human hair," Vincent illuminated, somewhat redundantly as Brennan had already taken the forceps from him and was currently holding the follicle millimeters from the bridge of her nose for examination. Hogarth raised a hand to appropriate it for his own analysis but Brennan promptly slapped it away. "One that somehow wasn't incinerated when the victim's body was burned, which means it was probably deposited during disposal." Vincent raised his eyebrows incriminatingly. "It could belong to our murderer."

Hogarth returned both hands safely to his pockets, but didn't step back out of the scant margin of personal space he was currently leaving Dr. Brennan. "Very likely," he concurred judiciously as Brennan opened her mouth, in all likelihood to say something precisely along those lines. He also beat her to looking back up at Vincent and cocking a questioning brow. "Is it enough for a DNA sample?" He queried, as though he'd done this with these people a thousand times before. Brennan had to curb an eye-roll.

Vincent held up an aspirant index finger. "It might be," he said. "I'll run it to Hodgins and find out." He took the miniscule hair particle back from Dr. Brennan, pausing halfway through his turn to leave. "Did you know," he proffered, turning briefly back, "that human hair does, in fact, _not _keep growing subsequent to cellular death of the body? The common perception that it does, along, of course, with the fingernails," – Vincent gestured histrionically to his own cuticles – "is, in fact, a myth."

Brennan's expression didn't change as she looked back at him with an air of blatant non-surprise. "I did know that Mr. Nigel-Murray," she replied after a moment, her tone even a bit chastising. "If I didn't I wouldn't be a forensic anthropologist."

Vincent dipped his chin in a tight, one-beat nod. "Right," he said. "I apologize. I'll get this to Hodgins…ASAP."

"Not so fast, Mr. Nigel-Murray," Cam's voice stopped him as he trotted up the platform steps behind Hogarth and Brennan, moving as quickly as her three-inch heels would allow. In her hand she was holding what appeared to be a travel-sized satellite TV. "I have a feeling you'll all want to see this."

"Cam, this is a forensic platform. We're working on a murder investigation," Brennan reminded her testily, sounding affronted at her own boss' lack of professionalism as she watched her set up the television on a vacant cadaver table.

"This will only take a second," Cam assured her, bending to angle the screen in their direction as she flipped to the channel she needed, "the dead guy can wait."

"Girl," Brennan corrected, doing her best to ignore Hogarth as she observed him appraising Cam's protuberant hind quarters out of the corner of her eye.

Cam straightened and turned. Hogarth's eyes shot up. "What?"

"Girl," Brennan repeated astutely. "The victim was female."

Cam nodded promptly. "Oh, right," she breathed, sounding as though she hadn't registered a word Brennan had said. "Whatever. I really think you need to see this first," she contended, stepping aside and gesturing to the tiny TV. "I didn't know about it myself 'till Ms. Julian called me from J. Edgar Hoover to tell me to flip to channel one-eighty-two. I guess it's a really big deal."

Brennan took a step forward, a distant red flag beginning to flap in the back of her mind. "What is it?" She asked, her voice coming out inexplicably airy as her eyes fused themselves to the screen. She recognized the prim neon-green lawns and professionally-groomed flower beds of Memorial Park, not twenty blocks inner-city from the Jeffersonian. It was densely peppered with an abnormal amount of people, nearly all of whom were clad in black. She immediately discerned a number of FBI uniforms, several other service badges…it appeared to be some kind of news broadcast; a strip of blue was conveyer-belting across the bottom of the screen, white letters disclosing something about mourners coming to pay their respects….

"We released Judge Templeton's body for burial yesterday," Cam explained hastily, preoccupied herself with the images on the screen. "I had no idea, though, how esteemed he was within government circles; apparently he used to serve in the military overseas, like Booth, and he was a real big shot on the Federal bench. Loads of commendations for fair trials and justified persecutions."

Brennan's eyes flickered to Cam. "So?" She questioned, her brow furrowing in nervous disconcertion. She didn't know why, but suddenly she was beginning to feel panic rising in her chest.

"So," Cam went on, gesturing to the TV as though the rest should have been self-explanatory, "he's getting a state funeral. The head of the Bureau of Investigation is going to be there, along with tons of other judges, honorary pallbearers," she paused for effect, "and Booth has been entreated to deliver a tribute speech."

Brennan's eyes torpedoed back to Cam's face, suddenly wide. "Booth?" She echoed, feeling her chest grow tight.

Cam nodded, averting her face a bit from the intensity of Brennan's gaze. "He's one of the best the FBI has," she explicated, grasping for reasons Brennan should have appeared so alarmed at this. "He said it was his day with Parker and he was going to bring him to watch." Cam offered a half-shrug. "Said he wanted to see his dad honoured by the government for a job well done."

Brennan's sense of urgency suddenly redoubled. A siren shrilled in her head. "PARKER'S GOING TO BE THERE!" She confirmed heatedly, suddenly looking a bit feverish as she felt the blood drain from her face. _Collateral damage. Other targets._

All at once all eyes in the room were on Dr. Brennan. Cam's brows knit together in bewilderment; what the hell was Brennan getting so worked up about? "Yeah, he's there now. This is a live feed," she replied slowly, cagily, as though Brennan ran the risk of exploding if she made any unexpected exclamations. "He wasn't going to miss his father being seen on television all over the country…are you okay, Dr. Brennan? You're looking a bit pale –".

"The _country_?" Brennan parroted, putting unwarranted (seemingly) emphasis on the word. "This is a national broadcast?"

Cam looking guardedly from Brennan to the TV screen. "International, from what I understand," she modified warily.

When Brennan spoke again, she barely managed to inject any sound in her voice beyond a dry wheeze. She had never felt this way before. She supposed it wasn't dissimilar to what having a panic attack must feel like. "So," she managed after half a beat of digesting, "the whole world's going to see it."

This uncharacteristic dim-wittedness seemed to alarm Cam more than anything else. "Well, yeah…" she replied, turning her head to regard Dr. Brennan out of one eye, as though she was some foreign specimen she had never examined before.

Without a word of explanation, Brennan reached into her lab coat pocket and procured her cell phone. Raising the face to her own, she dialled Booth's number, her thumb flying across the keypad. She held the phone up to her ear, holding her breath. ***

It was a perfect day for a funeral, if there could be such a thing; the sky was a bottomless, cloudless royal blue, the air still and mild amongst the trees and shrubbery of Memorial Park. The tribute speakers had commenced their speaches. Booth was listening to the agent assigned to go before him, rehearsing his own speech word-for-word in his head. He'd left Parker on the sidelines where he knew he'd be out of the way and still have a clear view around the ample crowd that had gathered before the podium. Glancing his son's way, he cocked an affectionate grin and raised a hand in a just-checking-in kind of wave. Parker beamed and wagged an open hand back. Suddenly Booth felt his cell buzz inside his pocket. His hand instinctively went to his hip, and he glanced down at the caller ID briefly before he hit the END CALL button, suppressing an old, phantom pain as he turned his attention back to the tribute speaker. ***

The phone rang twice before it was disconnected to an opaque dial tone. It hadn't even gone to voice mail. Brennan swore and pocketed it again.

"Dr. Brennan, what's going on?" Cam's voice was detached and muted, as though she were hearing it from under water. She barely heard it at all.

She was beginning to have that sensation that she was suffocating again, drowning in her own panic. She could feel her heart thundering vociferously against the inside of her ribcage, sounding like Native American drum beats in her ears. It was no use. Her blood was frozen solid. It wasn't going anywhere. Staggering back away from the cadaver table, Brennan nearly fell down the platform steps as she snapped off her white latex gloves and glanced hysterically from Cam to Hogarth to Vincent Nigel-Murray, the look in her azure eyes bordering on the deranged. "I-I have to get to Memorial Park," she stammered, her voice leaping up several octaves as the horrifying realization of what could happen if she didn't pinched it tightly. "Now."

"What?" Cam took a hasty step after her, arms spread in question. "_Why?_"

Brennan didn't break stride as she hit the hallway. "Because Booth could be in danger," she relayed hurriedly. "Parker too." Her breath was beginning to come in short, frenzied gasps. With a start she realized she was hyperventilating. "I have to get there…" her voice trailed off as suddenly she pulled up short, an angry red light flashing in her mind's eye. She swore again, loudly this time.

Cam looked as though she no longer knew which direction the assault was coming from. "_What_?" She demanded.

"My car." Brennan turned to face them, her complexion ashen. "It's still out of gas; I took a cab to work this morning!"

Cam backpedalled. "What makes you think Booth and Parker could be in danger?" She questioned, her tone tempering as though she were prepared to talk Brennan down from a precipice if need be.

Realizing she would have to provide answers before she could get help, Brennan forced one long, tremulous breath through her lungs, trying to calm her nerves enough to speak at a pitch and pace humans could comprehend. "I ran into Medina the other night," she explained as quickly as she could without the words running together, still working to impart a necessary tone of urgency into her words. "He said Brodsky had his hands full with another attempt to deter Booth from his case. He said it was going to be public. He said the entire world would know what a joke the FBI was –"

Cam was miles behind. "You 'ran into' Medina," she echoed, shaking her head as she tried to decode what this could possibly mean.

Brennan was getting desperate now. "He talked about other targets besides me!" She shouted, her voice hitching on a wave of hysteria. "Parker's going to be there!"

Without a word of protest or inquisition on the matter, Vincent removed his own gloves and reached for his keys. "I'll drive you, Dr. Brennan," he told her succinctly, his normally timid, wavering voice suddenly rock-solid. Unable to challenge enough sporadic energy into words enough to thank him, Brennan could only nod tightly and follow as he blew past her down the hall.

"Why didn't you tell someone about this sooner!" Cam called after her, still working to catch up, as if it mattered. She felt as though she couldn't possibly get a grasp on the direness of the situation until she had a clear understanding of how it had come to unfold.

"I forgot!" Brennan called back over one shoulder, her voice echoing down the glass-panelled lab hallway as her lungs reached full capacity.

Cam exchanged dazed glances with Agent Hogarth. "She _forgot_?" She repeated, palms upturned and open as though in hopes of catching any logic that might happen to fall from the sky in that moment. Her voice was quieter now that Dr. Brennan was out of earshot.

Hogarth let his eyes linger on Cam's for the briefest of moments before he sighed a bit wearily and turned them to gaze after Dr. Brennan, shaking his head in mystification. "Why is she always doing that?" He wondered aloud. ***

"I'll drive!" Brennan made a grab for the keys as she and Vincent closed in on his car in the parking garage.

"Oh, no you won't!" He stretched them out of her reach – not an easy feat, considering he wasn't that much taller than she was – and gave her an assertive shove toward the passenger's side. Extremely averse to wasting time, Brennan got in.

"What are you waiting for?" She demanded vehemently when Vincent climbed into the driver's seat and sat behind the wheel for a beat with the keys poised over the ignition.

His nervous quiver returned. "I think you should buckle your seatbelt."

The words were barely out of his mouth before she was belting at him; "JUST DRIVE!"

"Okay." He cowered behind crouched shoulders and revved the ignition to life. ***

"Agent Booth?" Booth's brainwaves were still on the name he'd just seen come up on his cell phone screen when a deeply-baritoned voice jolted him from his reverie. He snapped his gaze up to the face of Assistant Director Andrew Hacker of the FBI, and quickly rearranged his features into a professional stoicism.

"Yes, sir," he answered promptly, straightening at the sight of his boss and pushing thoughts of Bones to the back of his mind.

Agent Hacker smiled courteously. "You're on deck," he said.

Booth nodded tightly. "Yes, sir," he reiterated, and turned to the podium as the previous tribute speaker stepped down. He ascended the platform, took his position behind the tall wooden dais. Unfolding the page with his cues on it from his front shirt pocket, he placed it on the platform before him, flattening it almost lovingly beneath the palm of one hand. He cleared his throat, glanced up into the crowd. The press was there; he could see the many single eyes of media cameras, the glossy updo's and hourglass blazers of female reporters. Besides them, there had to be hundreds of spectators there. For the briefest of moments he felt his throat run dry. _Oh sure,_ he thought wryly, _you can stare down the barrel ofan AK-47 but you can't handle public speaking. _His gaze slid slightly to the right, found Parker standing behind the tide of people, off to the side a bit. His son's cherub grin jump-started his tongue. He felt the warmth flow back into his limbs, and took a deep breath. "Federal Judge Marcus Templeton," he began, in a steady voice that boomed over the crowd, "was patriotism personified..." ***

"Gun it! _Gun it! GUN IT_!" It was all Brennan could do to abstain from beating the side of the driver's seat with the palm of her hand as she and Vincent approached a busy intersection where the light was turning yellow.

"Dr. Brennan, I can't run a red signal!" Vincent protested as the car slowed to a halt in the lane before the traffic light.

Brennan's voice was near hysterics again. "Do you have any idea how important this is, Mr. Nigel-Murray?" She demanded, her eyes dangerously ablaze as she turned them on him.

He lifted both hands from the wheel helplessly. "Yes," he replied, matching the volume of her voice with his own, "but this is a busy junction; we won't be any good to Agent Booth if we get ourselves killed on the way!"

Brennan opened her mouth to argue, but at that moment the light turned green. "GO! GO! GO!" Tires screeched and the car galloped down the interstate, skidding around the final corner a block from the entrance gate to Memorial Park. "Stop here!" Brennan instructed, and Vincent reamed on the brakes just outside the gate. "Okay," Brennan turned to him fleetingly, the muscles in her jaw tense, her face a portrait of urgency, "Vincent, I want you to stay here, understand? Don't turn the car off and no matter what you see or what you hear, do _not _follow me, is that clear? You put the car in drive and you get yourself out." She spaced the last three words around margins of resolve, leaving no room in between for argument.

Suddenly Vincent's face was open and terrified, mirroring that of the small child Brennan was addressing him like. "But -" he started to protest, but Brennan was already pulling on the door handle, swinging her long legs out of the passenger's side of the car.

"Stay here!" She ordered over her shoulder, part of the last word coming to him slightly muffled as she slammed the door behind her halfway through it. ***

"...through his service in the United States Armed Forces, and his prestigious career on the Federal Bench, he represented the proudest, most valiant and most just of the American paradigm. And we at the FBI are making an oath to you, the citizens of America, that his regretable passing will not be denied the justic it deserves. At this moment we have agents working around-the-clock on locating and apprehending his assassin, and we promise you the Federal Bureau of Investigation will not rest until -"

"Booth!" The voice was so distant, at first Booth thought he had imagined it. "BOOTH!" His speech broke off, and his dark eyes snapped up from the podium, sweeping over the crowd. Bodies turned, curious murmurs rippled through the throng; he wasn't the only one who'd heard it. Then he saw it. Bone's all-too familiar, slender frame was belting toward him at a full-out run across the lawn, clad in not but a pair of black pants and a collared white blouse that nearly matched the tone of her complexion perfectly. She must have removed her lab coat before she'd arrived, Booth decided, recognizing the clothes she often wore to work. Her cinnamon hair tailed behind her, loosed from the bun she'd had it contained in earlier.

He had but a moment to wonder what on earth she could possibly be doing there, interrupting his tribute speech; his consciousness skipped almost instantaneously over indignation, going straight to concern, knowing all-too well the many merits of her character. Then the air around him exploded; shots rang out. Pandemonium erupted throughout the assembly. People scattered like panicked antelope. He heard her voice one more time before the screams drowned it out; "Booth, get down!"

He hit the floor of the platform behind the podium. For the briefest of moments his mind was void, working overtime to catch up. Then his combat-trained composure as an ex-sniper took the reins and he was able to discern his own calm, clear thoughts even over the outbreak of chaos that was ensuing on the lawn. Speakers were screaming and scurrying in all directions, gunshots were still popping against his eardrums at an alarming frequency. There were too many to count, and he couldn't see where they were coming from - it had to be a sniper rifle. He felt a clammy sense of dread seize his insides as he remembered his son. Crawling on his hands and knees to the edge of the platform, he craned his head around the side of the podium, looking for him. He spotted him exactly where he'd left him, spinning in frightened, disoriented circles amongst the blurred bodies of fleeing adults. "Parker!" He called, panic rising for the first time in his throat. "PARKER!" ***

Booth disappeared behind the podium. Brennan hoped to God it had been intentional on his part. Then she spotted Parker. He was off to one side, near the back of the field. She made a bee-line for him, her calves burning from the effort of running as fast as she could make them. She pumped her arms, still working to double her speed. Any moment now she expected to feel the sting of a bullet, was prepared to have her body perforated like a shooting range canvas as she heard the rapid fire continue. She steeled herself to run straight through it, to convince herself she didn't feel a thing until she made sure Booth and Parker were both safe.

Parker was turning in tight, desperate circles, looking for an escape route, any sancuary toward which to run. Brennan saw tufts of turf explode into the air close to his heels, bullets showering around his small frame.

"PARKER!" She shouted over the mayhem as she approached him, and he looked up, recognizing her voice and his name. He immediately outstretched two child's arms toward her.

"Dr. Brennan!" It was half-confused, half-relieved.

Brennan didn't slow her pace she ran full-force into him, knocking the wind out of the poor kid, she was almost certain, as she scooped him up in her arms on the fly, cradling his halfling body to her chest, her hand shielding the back of his head, pressing his face tightly into the hollow of her throat as he wrapped his legs tightly around her waist. ***

Booth had Parker pegged securely in his line of vision, not daring to blink as he bellowed his name so loudly he thought his vocal chords might shred. But then suddenly he watched as his son disappeared in a streak of white blouse and brown hair. He scrambled to his feet. And in that moment Booth looked up to find he was faced with perhaps the most terrifying sight he'd ever encountered in all his life - more frightening, even, than his days in military combat; Bones was sprinting full-tilt toward him, her body shielding that of his son, both of them making a mad dash through a rain of bullets.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note: As I seem to find myself saying quite frequently in my fanfictions: I apologize in advance for this…. You'll either love it or you'll hate it. Just know that I welcome reviews of either lateral.**

**Chapter 7: The Hole in the Heart**

It seemed to happen in slow motion. Booth had all the time in the world, and somehow at the same time no time at all to experience the icy grip of fear around his heart, the feeling like it was going to explode as he watched his son and partner narrowly dodge death a thousand times over while they raced toward him. Then they were there; Bones flew into his arms, colliding with his chest at full-force. They sandwiched Parker between them, Brennan ducking into Booth's iron embrace and letting him close her body in a protective circle with his arms. She buried her face in his shoulder while Parker smothered his against the skin of her neck. She could feel Booth's arm around her back, holding her to him with almost industrial-strength tightness, his hand cradling the back of her head, Parker's warm breath against her throat.

They stood there like that until finally they realized that somehow, at some point, the shots had ceased without any of them noticing, giving way to a ringing silence as suddenly as they had disturbed the peace. For a long moment the only sound Brennan could hear was the frantic, laboured pants of Booth's breath just above her right ear. Then she felt his chin lift slightly against her temple. "He's out of rounds," he wheezed haltingly, the adrenaline making it difficult to speak. "He must have taken off."

Brennan lifted her face, drawing back just enough so she could look up at Booth. "He missed?" She breathed, her own voice coming out airy and stunned. "Brodsky missed. He never misses."

Booth nodded hastily and looked back down at her. "Yeah, well, he did this time," he murmured in a high voice. "Thanks to you." He drew back another inch or so, his palm moving from Brennan's head to Parker's cheek in her arms. "Hey, little man, you okay?" He asked, his voice edging up another octave as he addressed his son, scrutinizing his face at close range. Parker was crying, but he managed a slow, traumatized nod. "Ugh," Booth shook his head in disgust, residue of the fright still evident in his features in the form of a furrowed brow and a tight jaw. "I'm _so _sorry, Buddy. I'm sorry." He planted a kiss in Parker's ochre curls, closing his eyes and holding his lips there for a long time. The skin of his face brushed Brennan's as he did so. She didn't mind. She pressed her cheek harder against the crest of his forehead, relishing the warmth of him, the life. There were a few torturous minutes there where she thought she might never feel it again. "It's over now," she heard him mutter in a voice barely audible, to Parker, to her, to himself. "It's all over."

Looking back up, he realized they were the only ones left in the park. Everyone else had fled. He performed a cautionary glance at the surroundings. He could see no sign of Brodksy, where he had been or where he might have gone. He turned his gaze back to Brennan, still clamping her upper arm in one hand. She could feel the indentations were his fingertips would leave bruises. "Are _you _okay?" He demanded, a sudden urgency working its way back into his voice as his chocolate eyes drilled her face.

She managed a rocky nod and an airily muttered, "Yeah," which he spoke over.

"You're sure?" He pressed, his eyes flying down to her feet briefly before sailing back up to her face, giving her a quick once-over just to make absolutely certain.

She kept nodding and replied in a firmer voice this time. "Yes, Booth, I'm fine." Now that the ordeal was over and the fear of never seeing Booth again had passed, she found she couldn't keep the edge out of her voice as she spoke to him, remembering the last time they'd been together. Booth's eyes scrutinized her face, unblinking, his expression unreadable.

"Agent Booth!"

Booth and Brennan broke apart, Parker somehow having been transferred from Brennan's arms to his father's in that time, and both turned to see Hacker jogging back their way across the lawn. He appeared to be unscathed, and clearly out of breath. "Everything alright here?" He panted, then his eyes lighted on Brennan. "Temperance," he nodded once in her direction. "You alright?"

She was beginning to feel like a bobble-head. "Yes, Andrew," she assured him. "I'm fine." She glanced over her shoulder at Booth, who was holding Parker tightly against him as though he never wanted to let him go. "We're all fine."

"Was anyone hurt?" Booth wanted to know then from behind Brennan.

Hacker shook his head. "Gunman wasn't indiscriminate, thank God," he speculated shrewdly. "He was aiming for one person and one person alone, who he thankfully didn't get. FBI witness says it was Brodsky and he saw him flee the scene. We've got squad units tailing him as we speak."

Booth nodded, satisfied, and leaned Parker back on his hip enough so he could look him in the face. "Okay, Bub," he said in that intrinsically paternal voice Brennan thought must be engrained the minute you brought life into the world, "here's what we're going to do. I'm going to let you go with Assistant Director Hacker, here," he nodded benignly toward the other agent, "and he's going to take you back to Dr. Brennan's work where you'll be safe until I come and get you, okay?"

But Parker was already shaking his head rigorously, causing his honey-coloured curls to uncoil and recoil almost violently, wanting nothing to do with the proposal. "I don't want to," he sobbed around a wet sniffle. "I want to stay with you!"

Booth looked as though his heart were about to break. "You can't do that, Buddy, okay? Not right now. It's too dangerous and Dad has work to do. I promise I'll come get you the minute I'm finished. You'll be fine there, I swear." He looked beseechingly into his son's face. By now Parker's tears had abated enough that he seemed to be able to see reason, though his breath was still coming in shallow hiccoughs.

"Knuckle-sandwich swear?" He affirmed, raising his blond eyebrows meaningfully at Booth, who cracked a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"Knuckle-sandwich swear," he echoed, and bumped fists with his son.

"Cross your heart?" Parker implored further, apparently not entirely satisfied with this.

Booth lifted his chin in a dramatic nod. "Cross my heart and hope to die," he said, then immediately wished he hadn't. His already feigned smile wavered ever so slightly and he stepped forward to pass Parker over to Agent Hacker, not trusting his son's underdeveloped legs to support his weight just yet. Parker held onto the collar of his suit a little longer than was necessary, releasing it from a clamped fist with more than a little reluctance as Booth transferred him into Hacker's grasp. "Take him back to the Jeffersonian," he instructed, "and leave him with Dr. Lance Sweets. He's a psychologist and he knows Parker. He'll take care of him."

Hacker nodded his acknowledgement, hitching the little boy up on his hip. "'Kay," he said, then procured a Federal issue two-way satellite radio from his pocket and held it out to Booth. "You take this. We'll be in touch if there are any more developments."

"'Kay," Booth parroted Hacker's response. "Thanks. You'll be fine, little man!" He called as Hacker turned to leave with Parker. The boy was watching his father closely over the other agent's shoulder, as though terrified of the moment he would disappear from his sight. "I'll see you soon, I promise!...I love you!" Then Hacker turned a corner and they were gone. Parker hadn't smiled once. "He'll be fine," Booth murmured, more to reassure himself than anyone as he turned back to face Brennan, who nodded an affirmation. Apparently that was all she could do at the moment.

Booth's eyes snagged on her face then, lingered there for a long time. Without a word, he closed the small distance between them once more and crushed her against him in another enamoured embrace. She didn't hesitate in wrapping her arms around his neck, savouring the feeling of his arms around her back, a hand on the nape of her neck under her hair, a part of her wondering how long it would last, and another, stronger part certain that it didn't matter.

"Thank you so much," he whispered in her ear, speaking slowly so she knew he meant it. He showed no signs of a willingness to let her go any time soon, though he felt her muscles push against him when she heard this in an attempt to pull away.

"Please," she managed in a choked voice. "Don't thank me."

"Are you kidding?" Without letting her pull away in the slightest, Booth untangled their heads just enough to look down into her face, his arms still wrapped tightly around her body, their noses touching. "Bones, you saved my son's life. You could have been killed." He shook his head, expelling that same dreadful breath of air he had when he'd looked into Parker's face and considered what could have happened to him. His lips found her temple, ricocheting off it briefly before they were ear-to-ear again, him holding her to him in a death-grip. "I'm so glad you're okay. Thank you so much."

All of a sudden Brennan felt tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. Her chest felt constricted, but not as a result of Booth's embrace. Now that it was all over, and she was experiencing an abrupt expulsion of adrenaline, she felt as though her heart was sinking into the very depths of her stomach. It was a similar sensation to coming down from a high; it seemed as though you would never be able to feel happiness again. While she knew there was more she had to say, wrongs she had to set straight, at the moment all she wanted to do was sob into his suit jacket. Now that she had won back his trust and respect, she felt she deserved it the least. It was her fault any of this had happened in the first place, after all.

"Booth," she whispered after a moment, her voice cracked with the effort of an overload of emotion she wasn't accustomed to. "I have to tell you something."

Now Booth released her, just enough to hold her at arm's length by the biceps, his brown eyes locking onto her blue ones. "Sure," he said, his voice lightening in question. "What?"

She swallowed hard and broke eye contact, looking at the ground while she tried to decide whether to stick with her original plan for the next time she saw him, or to pitch that one out the window and go with what Sweets had said she should do instead. Both were true, and it certainly wasn't like her to alter course in the middle of a strategy, but even so…. ***

Hugh Medina was on his way to the hide-out Brodsky had been using for the shooting when he saw them. He was pretty sure his mentor would have already vacated the premises long ago, having unsuccessfully attempted to slay the FBI agent's son, but it was worth a shot to check, anyway. He'd promised Brodsky, after all, that if anything went awry, he would be there to divert pursuit from law enforcement. He wasn't sure what exactly had gone wrong; he'd been squatting in a secluded grove, partly obstructed from the scene of the intended massacre when he'd heard the shots. Exactly the number Brodsky had loaded in his rifle. He'd counted. All of them had discharged. He'd heard screams, caught glimpses of people running, but as far as he could tell no one had been killed. This was extremely disconcerting for him – his boss never missed. Only now did he realize why.

Catching sight of them embracing up near the evacuated platform, he skated to a graceless halt amongst a small cluster of evergreens, peering out from behind one of the gnarled trunks, his pallid face brightened by a delighted smirk. He could hardly believe his luck. Of course, the scientist lady. The _partner_. The one who kept breaking his arm. Brodsky hadn't counted on her. They'd resigned themselves to the impression that she was now out of the picture, relinquishing any and all hopes of using her as leverage to discourage the agent. And now here she was. Here _they _were. Together. It was too perfect. Medina felt a rare buzz of opportunity thrill through his system at this knowledge. Brodsky was clearly gone; if he weren't they would both be dead by now, but _he _was there. He had them in his sights. Practically already in his crosshairs. Both of them. Brodsky would reward him royally….

Reaching into his back pocket, Medina drew forth the forty-five millimeter semi-automatic he could now call his own, thanks to Dr. Brennan's prompting. An elated tremor coursed through the hand holding the gun, all the way up his forearm, not unlike an electric current. He had to do it now, while she had her back to him, while the agent was looking at her. He pulled the hammer back with his thumb, relishing the metallic click that preluded destruction, raised it slowly, taking careful aim…. ***

Forcing her eyes back up to his, Brennan made a decision. She unhinged her jaw, summoning words. "I –" She broke off, choking on a statement that was far too big for vocalization.

Booth scrutinized her carefully, unblinking, working for all the world to get a read on whatever it was she was trying to tell him. "What?" He prompted, ever so gentle, his voice barely more than a feathery touch. He pulled her closer to him, the contact encouraging. So engrossed was he in her face that he didn't even hear the shot. He watched as something splintered behind her eyes, something too encoded for him to decipher. Her features clouded and her bottom lids twitched slightly. Her lips remained parted, only now it looked as though they were locked that way. Her voice caught in her throat.

"What is it?" He questioned again, just as soft, mistaking her reserve for difficulty. "What's wrong, Bones? Bones!" She'd started to slip in his arms, her knees buckling so she collapsed forward against his chest, the breath rushing out of her as though she were suddenly winded. He supported her under the arms as she started to inch down his body, sinking, turning to dead weight. "Hey," he uttered in a high voice, startled. "What are you…" his voice trailed off as all at once he felt something warm and wet trickle over his fingertips on her back. All thoughts of what it could be froze and he raised his hand over the bridge of her shoulder to see what it was. His fingers were gloved in a glistening sheen of deep crimson. All brain processes going on emotional lockdown, he snapped his gaze up over her head and noted, with a lance of horror, Medina standing maybe a hundred yards away, just in front of a small patch of trees. His arm was raised, his fingers clamped around the body of a forty-five Firestar that was pointed in their direction. The barrel was still smoking.

Military reflexes kicking into high gear, Booth lowered Brennan quickly but lightly to the ground, kneeling over her body as his hand flew to his hip to procure his own nine-millimeter cop slug. This seemed to shatter Medina's euphoric paralysis and he turned and bolted, pocketing his own weapon without any further thought. Booth kept firing until Medina was completely out of sight, his steady hand thwarted by the perpetrator's zig-zag weaving pattern around a maze of trees. He returned his gun to its holster and switched out for the police radio Hacker had given him. Nearly breaking the CALL button with the force with which he pressed it down, he held the receiver to his lips, knuckles deathly white. "Hacker!" He barked into the radio, surprised by the tremulousness of his own voice. "Medina's heading West toward Blackthorn Boulevard out of Memorial Park. Tell the SWAT team to consider him armed and dangerous, and send back-up."

There was a beat of static. "Copy that," Hacker's distortedly fuzzy voice cracked back over the line and then blipped out.

Booth looked down at Brennan's face then, felt the blood drain from his own. Her skin was turning ashen, her lips a terrifying mauve. Her eyes were closed and her teeth were clenched, her breath coming in short, uneven gasps through her nose as though she were working to suppress pain. He opened his mouth to say something but before he could he heard footsteps behind him. In a blur of motion his gun went from its holster back to his hand and he raised it, cocked and ready in the direction of the sound.

Vincent Nigel-Murray skidded to a halt, palms raised toward Booth in a non-threatening manner, not that Booth would have suspected him. He more than likely came having heard the shots, wanting to see if everything was alright. The gun dropped. "Vincent," he addressed the intern sharply before he had a chance to say anything. "Go call an ambulance."

Booth watched as alarm unravelled over Mr. Nigel-Murray's face and his eyes flitted from Booth to where Dr. Brennan was laying on the ground, to the black-red stain that was spreading rapidly through the grass under her upper back. His eyes widened and his whole body went rigid. "Oh my God."

Booth didn't have the patience for his shock. "GO! NOW!" He thundered, and with one more breezily uttered "Oh my God", Vincent did a one-eighty and sprinted back in the direction he had come, moving as quickly as his 'squintern' legs could carry him.

Only then did Booth become aware of the frail voice wafting up to him from the ground, thin as a vapour; Bones was trying to say something. It was so feeble, it took a few precious seconds, and a few more repetitions before he managed to catch it in full; "Booth, don't leave me." Whispered. Barely there at all. The helplessness in her voice terrified him.

Taking her shoulders in a solid but tender grip, he lifted her upper body off the ground and held it, horizontal against his own, looping one arm around her back to try and put pressure on the wound. The other supported her neck and head as one might when holding an infant. "I'm not going anywhere," he promised her softly, his voice still fractured in places it never had been before. "I'm right here, okay? Right where I've always been." He could feel his hands shaking almost violently as he held her, the blood coating his wrists and arms in a kind of sickening glaze. It screamed for the attention of his eyes, invaded the scent receptors in his nose. There was too much of it. It was coming too fast. His hand was barely managing to dam the stream at all. He trained his eyes whole-heartedly on her face, blanching again at how still it was.

"Bones, look at me," he muttered urgently, panicked by the sight of her closed eyes and giving her head a gentle shake in the crook of his elbow to try and remedy it. It didn't work right away. "Open your eyes, come on." He had to try three more times before her eyelids fluttered open to reveal glassy aquamarine irises, glazed over with pain. They wandered around for a moment before they focused on him, going from vague to lucid in no time flat. As they fixed themselves on his face they became wide an unblinking. It was a look Booth recognized, one he knew well. And it scared him. "Everything's going to be alright," to told her hoarsely, painfully aware of the fact that he was convincing himself as much as he was her. "You're going to be fine, just stay awake, okay? Stay with me. I'm right here. I'm not leaving you."

He could feel his heart hammering so hard inside his chest it was radiating his pulse all over his body, all the way to his toes and fingertips. He could feel it in his head, his throat, his stomach…. It felt as though it was going to explode with the effort of pumping blood, and yet, somehow, his veins still felt like ice. He could feel sweat pouring over his features – or were those tears? This wasn't happening. This wasn't real. He'd lived it already so many times in nightmares. That's what this was: a nightmare. It had to be.

"Booth." Again, barely more than a breath, virtually inaudible.

He pressed forward, experiencing a fleeting ghost of relief at the fact that at least she was talking again. "Yes, Bones?"

When she answered him she somehow managed to inject a bit more substance into her voice, so it was more than an anguished whisper. "I'm sorry."

Booth's brows knit together, overlapping with so many creases that for a moment he looked like a bloodhound. "For what?" He half-whispered, his tone desperately beseeching.

Brennan blinked hard and swallowed before she answered, a tear escaping the outside corner of her eye and running down her temple into her ear. "All of this is my fault," she managed brokenly, her voice pinched with agony and emotion. She felt as though her chest was exploding. The pain was beginning to give way to a dead numbness that was spreading rapidly through her ribcage, into her limbs. Whatever she had to say, she would have to say it quickly. "I never should have –" she broke off, the tears choking her at this thought. _Lied to you_, her head screamed for her to articulate. She swallowed again, trying to work the lump in her throat free. "If I'd just –" what? _Told you the truth? Trusted you, like you said? _For some reason she couldn't get the words out that she thought it so incredibly important for him to hear. No matter; he read them in her eyes.

"No, hey," he interrupted her, suddenly fierce as he cupped the side of her face with his clean hand, brushing at the damp tear trail with his thumb. "You listen to me, _none of this_," – he shook his head, bringing his face closer to hers – "is your fault, you understand? If it's anyone's fault it's mine. I should never have thought distancing myself from you would keep you safer. I should have stayed with you. I should have protected you. I should have been there…" his voice hitched in his throat and he shook his head harder, feeling the definite threat of tears now in his own eyes. He traced the line of her cheekbone with his thumb, trying to memorize its shape, the way her skin felt, smooth and soft like velvet. "I'm so sorry," he wept over her face. "This isn't your fault."

Brennan tried to count the number of times in the past when she'd witnessed Booth cry. They were very few and far between; she could tally them on one hand. It took a lot and was never something she liked seeing, especially when she always seemed to cry at the drop of a hat, but somehow now that she knew she was the reason for his suffering, she felt even worse about it.

"Booth?" This time her voice was weaker. He sobered and did his best to concentrate on her face.

"Yeah?"

She took as deep a breath as she could manage, feeling her lungs shriek a belligerent protest. This wasn't going to be easy. "Booth…the bullet severed my aorta," she forced the words out quickly, steeling herself for his reaction. When he only blinked blankly back at her, his eyes tightening in distaste of the way her proclamation sounded, she elaborated, vocalizing the part she'd hoped to God she wouldn't have to say out loud. "I have less than a minute to live." Her voice cracked on the last word, sound turning to aggrieved air.

She watched as Booth's features unravelled, the raw distress in his eyes almost too much for her to bear, but he had to know. As a trained anthropologist she was certain of the irreparable ravaging taking place inside her own body, knew exactly, by the way it felt, what was causing it. Booth had to be aware of this so he would be conscious of the limited amount of time they had left, so he would let her say what she needed to say.

At first, however, as anticipated, her plan backfired; he didn't believe her. "No, no, no," he shook his head fervently for the thousandth time, suddenly stern and speaking very quickly. "Don't talk like that. Don't worry. I'm going to fix this. You're going to be fine." He said it this time as though it were a fact, the way Brennan might allege that bones contained too much calcium to melt. She could feel the defiant energy in his palm against her cheek, his dark eyes hardening as they looked at her. "Just hold on, okay? Everything's going to be fine. Help is on the way…" He tore his eyes from her face. They darted around at his surroundings in desperation. "Damn it!" He swore. "What's taking Vincent so long?"

"Booth," she tried again, her eyelids growing heavy.

"Shhh. Don't try to talk right now." Whatever it was, he didn't want to hear it anymore, but she didn't back down.

"Booth, please listen to me," she implored determinedly, sliding her hand up to cover his over her cheek. She lowered it from her face, squeezed it with as much strength as she had over her heart. This silenced him. She gathered her energy for one last sprint. "I…owe you so much."

Booth suppressed a violent sob. "You don't owe me anything –" he began but she cut him off, impatient to get the words out.

"Yes, I do," she argued, her eyes widening earnestly. "You made me what I am. You made me strong."

"You've always been strong."

"No," she managed a miniscule shake of her head. "I was impervious. Before I met you I'd condemned myself to a half-life, a life that I never let anybody into, never let myself feel anything because I was afraid of being hurt." She had to stop to draw in a shaky breath before she could continue, emotion weighing her down again. "You…" tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, obscuring her vision. "You changed that, Booth. You changed _me_. You taught me what it feels like to care about someone so much that it overcomes your own fear. You got rid of my imperviousness. You made me strong."

Booth was holding her hand now with a crushing force Brennan thought might be a manifestation of his desire to hold onto her life, the precious life that was slipping away from him….

"Bones –" his voice was a dry, broken rasp, the desperate tone of a child beseeching an adamant parent.

"You've taught me so much, Booth. You gave me a life worth living. Thank you."

"Bones, _please_ –"

Her head was beginning to feel heavier against his arm, her grip slackening on his fingers. "Hodgins," she said suddenly, her eyes opening to their full extent again.

Booth blinked, completely thrown for a loop. "What?"

When she answered, her voice was so quiet he almost didn't catch it; "Get it from Hodgins," she said, her eyelids beginning to flutter heavily again, as though she could barely keep them open.

Booth made a grab at this line, working to keep her conscious. "Get _what _from Hodgins?" He demanded, the volume of his voice rising as the fear took hold again. Fear for him, translated directly into action. A beat went by and she still didn't answer. "Bones!" He tried shaking her gently again. Her head was beginning to wilt on her neck, her eyes sliding closed.

Right before her fingers went completely limp inside his hand, she managed what might have been four more words, whispered so lightly only half of them were discernable, the ghost of a statement; "I lo- y- …Booth."

He thought he knew what she'd said. All at once though, he found it was the last thing he cared about. He let go of her hand, catching the side of her face as it started to fall away from him and straightening her head again. "No," he rasped, all moisture suddenly sucked from his throat. "Bones, come on! Come on, stay with me, here. Open your eyes." He waited. "Look at me, Bones! Open your eyes! Wake up!" Her face, deathly white and still, might as well have been chiselled out of marble. Panic began to mount in Booth's chest, his heart and stomach zooming around each other as though neither had any idea where they belonged anymore. The rest of his insides felt as though they were no longer there, bottoming out. He tried screaming at her one more time; "_Wake up!_" When that failed to produce any result, he stilled his own breathing momentarily, listening for hers. The air was still against his lips, inches from hers. Using his cradling arm as leverage, he hitched her body up a few inches so he could lay his ear against the hollow of her throat, listening for a pulse. It was eerily quiet as a ghost town in there.

Feeling as though his own adrenaline was going to cause the blood vessels in his head to rupture, he lowered her hurriedly and gently back to the ground, muttering a snarled "Oh, no you don't," through clenched teeth as he tore open the top two buttons of her blouse to reveal a landscape of alabaster skin. Drawing himself up on his knees, he squared himself over her, folding both hands over the center of her breastbone with laced fingers. Steeling himself, he drew in a sharp, preparational breath through his nose and started pumping, counted to five. When he was finished he moved his hands to her head, tilting it back to clear the airway before he gently prized her mouth open and covered it with his own, delivering two substantial breaths while he pinched her nasal passage closed with two fingers. Her eyes remained closed, her face tombstone-still. Booth returned to the chest compressions, locking his elbows and kicking down with the heel of his hand five more times. He matched the contours of her lips, breathed twice more down her throat.

"Come on, Bones, don't do this," he pled as he drew himself up again to repeat the cycle. He was crying openly now, the desperation ripping him apart from the inside out, the ineffable sense of dread torturous. He felt as though he wanted to climb out of his own skin. "Please, don't do this to me." Two more breaths. "Come on, don't you dare leave me. Don't you dare give up." He sobbed while he pumped, feeling her chest cavity compress under his hands with every cycle, increasing the amount of force behind them each time, apparently to no avail. He couldn't shake the grim hopelessness that he was working on a corpse. He banished the thought immediately from his mind. Two more breaths.

"_Damn it, Temperance! Come on!_" He roared, sobbing harder than he could remember doing in a very long time as he straightened to repeat the cycle. It occurred to him that he hadn't called her by her real name since probably their first year working together. He heard the rush of footsteps behind him, multiple sets. It didn't register.

"Oh, God." The rest of the team drew to a halt not ten yards back from where Booth was leaning over her, now engaging his entire body weight in an effort to resuscitate her. Angela's doe-like brown eyes took in the sight of her best friend, tears springing into them almost instantaneously. Her hand flew to her mouth and she staggered back as though a typhoon had hit her, turned away. "Oh, no," her voice broke as she fell against Hodgins' chest, her free arm thrown around his neck. His hands encircled her back, moving slowly, numbly. He was staring, wide-eyed at the heartrending scene unfolding before them, his consciousness refusing to believe it could be real. His arctic-blue eyes locked on Dr. Brennan's face, his mind flashing on all the times he'd seen it teeming with life. He could remember it alive with passion, with fury at him and his experiments, with elation whenever she got to perform one herself, with gratitude, with infallible determination, with the vulnerability of a child when she had been buried alive with him in a car in Virginia. He heard an echo of a memory of her once saying to him "Thank you, Dr. Hodgins. I love you, too," when he'd presented her with a wildlife chart of poisonous reptiles and insects for her to avoid when she travelled to the Maluku Islands. What the hell kind of sick joke was this?

Cam's body had gone completely rigid where she stood, shoulders tense, unbreathing as she allowed the gravity of the situation to sink in. She had to blink back tears of her own. This was what they had all been afraid of. This was what all these years had been leading up to. A part of her wondered if she hadn't seen it coming, hadn't been waiting for it in some sense all along. Vincent was with them too, his eyes darting nervously between Cam, Angela and Hodgins and Booth and Brennan as though expecting someone to do something, as though his brain were working overtime to think of something _he _could do. Anything.

Sirens. No one turned to see from which direction they were coming. They were still a ways away, somewhere far off in the city, yet somehow everyone knew who they were for. They might as well have been wailing Brennan's name.

Booth was still too absorbed in his CPR endeavour to notice any of them standing there, watching. He pushed down hard on Brennan's chest with the full force of his weight behind the thrusts, begging her in a tear-shredded voice to come back to him. The team gave it a few minutes, until the bleakness of the situation became excruciatingly clear. Hodgins was the one to break the stark silence, turning to Cam while he held a bereaved Angela crushingly tight against his chest, shielding her. "This is heartbreaking," he murmured in a choked voice, flicking his eyes entreatingly to indicate Booth and Brennan.

Cam didn't waste any more time. Stepping forward, she swallowed the lump in her throat and laid a delicate hand on Booth's heaving shoulder. The force was such now that Cam discerned a recognizable pop emitting from Brennan's body, winced, fought down the bile that rose in her throat. "Booth," she managed tightly, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze when her voice failed to stop him right away. "Booth, that's enough. You're breaking her ribs."

She watched as Booth's features contorted in an anguished grimace, a fresh stream of tears cascading over his features in a feverish torrent as though he'd felt the splintering in his own chest. Still, he didn't cease his efforts, continued pumping with all his might, the almost superhuman strength of adrenaline behind him. More crunching. Brennan didn't flinch in the slightest. The whine of the sirens was getting louder.

"_Seeley_," Cam tightened her grip on Booth's shoulder, her voice gaining momentum despite the hitch of emotion in it. "Stop, it's too late! She's gone."

This seemed to snap Booth out of his state of hysterics, back to a comparably level ground of ration, even if only slightly. He visibly deflated, dropping back down off of his knees and seating himself on his heels, his body wracked with despair, his eyes squeezed tightly shut as he raised one defeated fist to his forehead. After two dry heaves, he doubled over toward Brennan's face, and for a moment Cam worried he was going to try to start the rescue breathing again. Instead though, he laid his forehead against hers, shaking it mournfully against her skin. "Please, God," he whispered, a prayer for no one and everyone to hear, his eyes still closed. "Not her." He dissolved into tears again. "Not her." He planted an adoring kiss on the skin of her face, opened his eyes to look at it through a glaze of tears. His voice dropped to a whisper, hitched on the kinks of soft sobs. "Bones," he muttered, anguished. "Please." He stared hard at her closed lids. In that moment he would have given his own life if it had meant seeing them open again, seeing those piercing blue irises looking back at him, wet with tears, dancing with joy. He didn't care. He just wanted to see them again.

An ambulance screamed to a halt in the middle of the grassy lawn behind them. Cam tugged gently on Booth's shoulder, tears streaming over her features. "Seeley," she said again, soft and careful.

Booth reared up. "No!" He thundered, wrenching his body out of her reach with an almost vindictive abruptness. "Leave me alone!"

Cam straightened, took a step back, but didn't back down. "Seeley you've done everything that you can. Let the professionals take it from here."

Booth remained where he was for a long time, kneeling next to Brennan. Finally, he righted one foot underneath him, fighting for a grip on some composure as he forced himself to his feet, looking as though it were the hardest thing he'd ever had to do in his life. EMT's were spilling forth from the ambulance, emergency trach kits and tourniquets suspended in their grasp. Immediately, they swarmed Brennan, gently elbowing Booth out of the way so they could check her vitals. He staggered back, a hand going to his mouth as reality began its horrible decent into his consciousness.

One of the technicians checked Brennan's pulse with two fingers then looked up at her supervisor, her expression grim. "She's DOA," she relayed delicately.

Booth felt his eyes slide closed, his whole face falling into his hand. "No."

The supervisor nodded. Equipment drooped uselessly in the hands of the rest of the team. "Let's bring her in," he ordered, and they readied a stretcher.

Booth couldn't watch while they loaded her into the back of the ambulance; he turned away for a moment, his hand still pressed tightly over his face, smothering sobs. Then he suddenly got a second wind, a surge of energy he hadn't been expecting. Wheeling around, he tailed one of the EMT's to the back door of the vehicle. Rotating red and blue lights cast the young man's face in an almost extraterrestrial light. "I want to go with her," he stated, his tone clearly indicating this was not a request as he braced one hand against the ambulance door so the EMT couldn't close it.

The other man looked placidly apologetic, as though he'd heard such a request a thousand times before, and still was only marginally immune to the agony he could hear echoing behind it. "I'm sorry, sir," he replied, sounding sincere. "I can't permit that."

Booth opened his mouth to protest but before he could Cam was behind him again, her voice like nails on a chalkboard in his ear. "Booth, it's over," she asserted quietly, wanting to raise a hand to his shoulder again but not daring to touch him. "There's nothing more you can do." Her pinched voice lowered a note. "It's over."

Booth continued to stare at the EMT for another moment, his expression stony while Cam's words carved their way down into his registry. Once they were fully sunk in, he let his hand drop from the ambulance door and turned. He heard the irrevocable slam of the door behind him, felt the vibration of it in his chest, raw, damaging. Suddenly he wished he'd given himself time to look upon her face one last time before they took her away. That face he knew so well, could read like an open book…. Even in death, it had still been beautiful.

With this thought Booth felt whatever walls had been left up inside of him crumble. For the first time, he resigned himself to the reality, and let himself fall apart. Stumbling forward under slumped shoulders, he dropped his weight on Cam, just about crushing her small body in his arms as he let his face fall onto her shoulder, let the tears saturate her blazer. She hugged him back, silent, unable to think of any words that could possibly alleviate his pain. Or any of their pain, for that matter. "She was my best friend," she heard him mutter against the fabric of her shirt. She nodded her acknowledgement, her temple grating his hair, but otherwise said nothing.

Vincent took a halting stride forward just as the ambulance screamed away, lights flashing. Angela and Hodgins were holding onto each other for what looked like dear life. Raising a tentative hand, Vincent let it hand in the air for a moment, deliberating, before he let it fall onto the middle of Booth's back, hunched over Cam. "You did everything you could, mate," he uttered softly, looking to reassure him. "There was nothing else you could have done. You did everything that you could."

There was a beat of silence during which time seemed to stand still, or rather they all wished that it would. For a moment the world felt like it was turning backwards, the universe inverting itself in an attempt to reconcile the impossible. For a long time, no one said anything. Then the satellite phone at Booth's hip buzzed. Releasing Cam, he unhitched it from his belt and pressed the answer button.

"We've apprehended Medina," Hacker's baritone informed him through a cackle of static. "Brought him in from the police station. You wanna question him?"

Booth's beaten down gaze brushed Cam's briefly. She tightened her eyes and tilted her head in a wordless way of telling him that obviously wasn't a good idea. Booth raised the radio to his lips, the word 'no' assembled and waiting on them. He held it back. Cam watched as a hardness suddenly broke into his eyes, and his resolve. Pressing the button down again, he gave Hacker his answer in a callous voice he almost didn't recognize as his own. "Yeah," he replied strongly. "I do." ***

In the ambulance, the EMT team was giving Brennan's body a routine once-over before they dropped it at the nearest hospital morgue, making sure everything was properly prepped for an autopsy. They examined the wound, ascertained that the bullet had lodged somewhere in her descending thoracic aorta. It hadn't gone all the way through. They made notes, hooked her up to monitors just until they arrived at a medical facility.

"She's a donor," the EMT declared as he read the back of the driver's licence he'd procured from a wallet in her pocket. He turned the card over. "Dr. Temperance Brennan," he read slowly off the front.

One of the other team members looked up. "The forensic anthropologist?" He affirmed, brow raised disturbedly.

The supervisor expelled a pitying breath, catching himself against a tool tray as the ambulance hooked a tight corner. "'Fraid so," he replied with a shake of his balding head. "What a shame." His grey eyes jumped to Brennan's face, taking in her porcelain complexion and closed eyes with a grain of discontent. Now that he thought about it, he'd seen it in the news before many times. She was a striking woman, hard to forget, and every time the story had been that she and her FBI partner – the one they'd encountered back at the scene? – had managed to snare some other criminal or murderer off the streets, ultimately deeming the world a better place, fragment by fragment. She was brilliant, from what he could ascertain from the stories, beautiful, and indispensably valuable to the government's branch of law enforcement. A woman like that, it somehow felt like an entire nation's steep cost to lose.

"Sir?" Suddenly the supervisor's attention was brought back to the present by the voice of one of his team members. It sounded hesitant, half-frightened and half-hopeful. He turned to find her craned over the shooting victim's body, one hand hovering timidly over Temperance Brennan's throat. "I'm feeling a pulse."

The supervisor sprang forward. "Are you absolutely certain?" He demanded, elbowing her out of the way so he could check himself.

"I think so," the EMT nodded. "It's weak – barely anything at all, but it's there."

The supervisor was silent for a moment, concentrating. He dug his fingers harder into the flesh, searching for whatever his trainee had felt. Then he felt it too. His eyes nearly doubled in size. "Get me a crash cart!" He thundered, and the troop of medical professionals around him flurried into action. The trainee adjusted and consulted the monitor over the gurney where Brennan was laid out. There were a few feeble (they couldn't even be called spikes) disturbances in the BP scan, but after a moment they were gone, the line going as flat as a lake surface on a windless day.

"It's gone again," she relayed, her voice pitched at urgency as she wheeled around to face the others.

"Open her shirt," the supervisor ordered, readying defibrillator pads. The EMT did as she was told. He switched on the AED and waited for the voltage to squeal ultrasonically into high gear. He squared the pads evenly over the victim's bared chest. "Charge to ten," he ordered another member of the team, who immediately dialled up the voltage on the AED.

"Charging to ten," he parroted.

"Clear!" There was a muffled bang and the victim's body gave a diminutive jump. The line on the BP monitor spiked fleetingly and then resumed its static trajectory.

"Charge to one twenty," the supervisor commanded under a cool air of authority, swallowing the adrenaline he could feel beginning to press on his sinuses as he leaned over Brennan's body a second time.

"Charged to twenty," the EMT repeated and his supervisor discharged.

"Clear!"

Again, her blood pressure skyrocketed, and again, flat-lined. The moving ambulance seemed to be bursting at the seams with the steady, lifeless intonation of the heart monitor, maddeningly constant. The supervisor sidled his chin once in an irked half shake of the head. He bent forward again. "Charge again!"

"Charged!"

"CLEAR!"

**Author's Note: I can't believe I cried….**


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note: Contains spoilers for 2x09 (Aliens in a Spaceship).**

**Chapter 8: The Linchpin**

Both Dr. Sweets with Parker close at his side and Federal Prosecutor Caroline Julian were waiting in the hallway of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building when Booth blasted through the doors. All three of them started when they got a proper look at the state he was in; he looked as though he'd been to a warzone and back without ever changing his clothes. Caroline's jaw dropped and Sweets, releasing Parker's hand momentarily, took a step away from the wall as Booth barrelled past, making a beeline for the interrogation room. "Booth, what –?" He began, startled, but Booth held up a stern palm without breaking stride.

"Out of my way, Sweets," he commanded in a voice so distraught it alarmed the psychologist, holding his hand up until he disappeared through the door of the interrogation room.

Sweets and Caroline exchanged brief, foreboding glances. "He's covered in blood again," Caroline discerned in a carefully lowered tone well out of Parker's earshot. "Why is the man always covered in blood?"

Without answering, Sweets turned quickly and knelt so he was eye-level with Booth's son. "Parker, I want you to stay out here for a minute, okay?" He told the boy with a meaningful raise of his eyebrows. "Just wait here and don't you move. We'll be right back." He straightened in the same moment that Parker nodded obediently in response, making a grab for Caroline's arm as the two of them hastened through the door after Booth, changing course in the corridor just before the entrance and segueing into the observation room off to the side that adjoined via a two-way mirror.

The minute he was in the room with Medina, and the murderer looked up to find him standing there for the first time, Booth could read the colourful shift of emotion behind his eyes. First a flicker of recognition, then consternation. His gaze swept over Booth's blood-stained suit, the livid set of his jaw. A shade of fear flashed behind his celery-green irises – rightfully so. Standing in the doorway, Booth exuded all the towering imposition of some ten-foot-tall mythic humanoid beast. He physically grew at the sight of Medina, sitting before him with clasped hands atop the table, hands that were unjustly free of blood.

Booth started to cross the room in three long strides, gaining momentum as he bore down on Brodsky's apprentice, hissing "You son of a bitch," viciously through clenched teeth as he went. When he realized Booth wasn't planning on stopping anywhere short of on top of him, Medina scrambled from his chair in a – rather pathetic given the confined space of the room around them – attempt to escape. Before he was even fully on his feet Booth was upon him, slamming him back against the wall with one hand clasped savagely around his throat, the other gripping the front folds of his shirt. There was a moment in which Medina's feet were even lifted off the ground, and his eyes rounded with a very sincere fear for his life. There was an almost animalistic brutality blazing in the agent's black irises that suggested to Medina that he wasn't above killing him.

"WHERE'S BRODSKY?" Booth demanded in a feral roar of a voice, his face inches from Medina's. The younger man could smell vengeance on his breath.

Behind the two-way, Sweets uncrossed his arms and reeled back a step, blinking in disbelief. "Whoa," was the only comment he made on the matter. Usually Agent Booth was a great deal more subtle than that when it came to interrogations. It was something he was remarkable adept at. Something he prided himself on. Sweets rifled through an array of possible scenarios in his mind that might explain such an abrupt conversion of disposition.

Beside him, Caroline Julian expelled a disapproving breath. "I know," she tutted, as if she were reading his mind. "What's stuck up _his _barrel?"

They watched as Booth hardly waited for an answer before he heaved Medina forward and slammed his back against the wall a second time, this time with enough force to knock the wind out of him. "WHERE IS HE?" He thundered, clearly leaving no room for nonsense. Medina test-ran some anyway.

"I don't know," he sputtered, his throat too constricted to produce anything beyond a choked whisper.

Booth's grip tightened. "The hell you don't." His voice was low this time, dangerous.

Medina's eyes rounded. "Are you going to kill me?" He wanted to know, Booth just barely managing to make out the words around the asphyxiating rasp.

Booth didn't hesitate. "Yes," he assured him in that same treacherous purr without missing a beat. "But first I need to know what rock your gutless dirtbag of a boss is hiding under so I can turn it over and crush him like a bug, too."

At this Medina looked despairing. "I was only doing my job," he whimpered, looking at Booth imploringly.

Animosity reared up in Booth's eyes. Removing his hand from Medina' sallow throat, Booth clamped it in accompaniment with the other one around the collar of the conman/rapist/murderer's shirt and reeled him away from the wall, lifting the entirety of his lanky body off the ground and bringing it down on top of the metal table in the middle of the room with a bone-crushing clang. Once he had him there, pinned, he delivered one crisp clout to Medina's jaw.

"Whoa!" Sweets intoned again from behind the glass, sounding even more startled than before. He turned an expectant gaze on Caroline. "He can't do that," he postulated, less a statement than a question. Then, "Can he _do_ that?"

Caroline looked incredulous, her eyes pasted to the glass and rimmed with white. "It's his interrogation room," she replied breathily. "He can do whatever the hell he likes." But even she didn't sound convinced of this, as again Booth grabbed a hold of Medina's shirt collar as he made an attempt to get up and reamed him back down against the table with the kind of ferocious abandon that left no reserve for bodily preservation; it looked as though Booth couldn't have cared less whether he fractured the man's spine or not. Sweets had never seen him like this before, and he had to admit it was terrifying.

"Your job," Booth parroted scornfully, his face pressing close to Medina's again as he craned over the table, holding him pinned under iron fists, "was to commit murder in cold blood." Suddenly there were furious tears in his eyes. "She was a good person. She had a better heart than you will ever know." His voice cracked and leapt up an octave but he kept going, the words scorching up his throat from a boiling point that had ruptured in the depths of his stomach. "She never did a single malicious thing in her life, and you killed her, you heartless, perverted son of a bitch!" He wheezed in a breath, just managing to squeeze the air through the knot in his throat down to his lungs. He felt as though he were drowning in tears. In sadness and wrath like he had never felt before.

As he listened, Sweets felt as though something had gone on lock-down in his subconscious; a deduction he dared not let himself make. "What's he talking about?" He queried delicately, shooting a sidelong glance at Caroline.

The prosecutor shook her head. "I don't know, cheri."

And then the world ground to a halt. "Because of you," Booth ploughed on, not giving Medina an inch in his grasp, "my partner is dead. And I promise you, that's something you're going to pay for. Both of you. Dearly."

In the observation room, a deathlike stillness blanketed the minimal space between Sweets and Caroline, a reality-smothering hush falling down with it. Sweets felt something dissolve inside of him, as though the floor had been ripped out from under his feet, and suddenly he was falling. "No," he muttered softly, without really being aware of his own voice.

"My God," Caroline breathed next to him.

Medina struggled, his voice reaching an almost feminine pitch as Booth held him with almost no effort at all. "You can't do this!" He shrieked, self-preservation instincts suddenly kicking in and overriding whatever dignity he had left. "This is police brutality! I know my rights!"

"YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS!" Booth's voice deepened again to a virile snarl. Sweets and Caroline could have sworn he mimicked the exact timbre of a male lion in that moment. "You certainly didn't give a damn about hers when you shot her in the back, did you? You coward." Booth shook his head in disgust. "'Police brutality'," he quoted scathingly. "You're lucky I don't shoot you in the face right now."

Medina's answering expression was defiant. "Why don't you?" He challenged, catching a whiff of Booth's inherent sense of morality and deciding to trail the scent.

Booth's voice was low and tremulous. "Because I'm not like you, Medina," he hissed fiercely in response. "I don't take lives unfairly. I'll take you out," he promised, "but I'll do it on a level playing field, fist-to-fist, like a man."

Medina took offense to his. "Isn't that exactly what snipers do?" He contested spitefully. "Always shoot from the higher ground?" He sneered at Booth's momentarily derailed blink. "That's right," he derided. "Brodsky briefed me on you. You're a killer, just like me. Just like Brodsky. Tell me," his voice quieted a note and he craned his head forward off the table, speaking almost in a whisper as though sharing an intimate secret, "isn't there a part of you…that likes it?"

For a moment, all brain processes froze for Booth.

"Don't you get a sort of high off of the thrill of taking another person's life? Off the power of wiping their existence from the planet forever. It's almost…god-like…isn't it?"

All at once, Booth's thoughts jump-started again and for a moment they were completely obstructed by a larger-than-life flash image of Brennan's face, her slow, heart-stopping smile and beautiful blue eyes. Reflections played in black-and-white across the screen of his memory; the two of them ice skating together, fixing the plumbing side-by-side in the cupboard under his kitchen sink, dining and dashing on a drink bill she never knew he'd paid for, belting out _Hot Blooded _with the stereo cranked up in her apartment when they'd been under lockdown. He actually almost smiled at that one, remembering that ridiculous high-kick…. Then he was aware of his own voice inside his head, hurt and vindictive; _This is the man that took that all away_, it intoned unforgivingly. _He pulled the trigger, and destroyed one of the two precious lives in this world you would have given your own to protect. He destroyed your happiness, the very essence of who you are, and now you'll never get her back._

After that the only thing Booth could see was red. His fists moved as though they had a consciousness and desire all their own, pelting Medina with a rain of punches that could have flattened a rhinoceros. He reamed on his face, his temple, his eyes, his nose, his jaw – wherever he thought he could inflict the most damage. Resistance, for the younger man, was futile to say the least; Booth had almost a foot on him in height and probably close to forty pounds in weight, all of that brute muscle, not to mention his arm was still broken. Medina was a dead man, unless someone did something about it soon, and they both knew it. Even so, Booth didn't slow down; he picked Medina up off the table as though he were a sack of flour and dropped him hard on the floor, exerting extra downward force with a driving thrust. Medina coughed and rolled, trying fruitlessly to evade Booth's pursuing assault. Booth straddled Medina's wiry frame, trapping it between his legs so it couldn't go anywhere. Reaching down, he bunched the front of Medina's shirt (now stained with the red-brown spatter that was showering from his nose) in one fist and hiked his upper body up off the floor so he could assail it with more blows from the other hand. He was listening for broken ribs, a cracked collar bone, anything to indicate he'd inflicted permanent damage.

Still observing from behind the two-way glass, Caroline suddenly perked up under a mental prompt for action. "He's actually going to kill the man," she remarked disturbedly, and pivoted on her heel to make a beeline for the door. Sweets, paralyzed, didn't move an inch from where he was standing. Opening the door, Caroline leaned her head out into the hallway, her deafening earthquake of a voice resounding through the halls of the FBI building a moment later; "HELLO!" She boomed. "SECURITY? WE NEED SOME HELP IN HERE!" Still, her words hardly registered with Sweets. He continued to watch Booth stoically through the glass, a deadness beginning to spread its way through his own innards as he considered his client's motive. Professionally, he could never condone such brutality. Personally, he wanted Booth to hit him until his brain was running out his ears. ***

_"…In other news, a state funeral in Memorial Park was interrupted yesterday by a mass shooting that resulted in a high-speed police chase down Blackthorn Boulevard. The funeral was for Federal Judge Mark Templeton, a highly esteemed counsel of the Federal Bench and a Purple Heart…" _the satellite TV Cam had set up in the lab to watch Booth's tribute speech the day before now, ironically, was turned to the same news channel, blaring a stark broadcast of the events that had taken place instead. Angela, Hodgins, Cam and Vincent were all gathered around it on the forensics platform, expressions sombre, arms crossed over all of their chests as though in an effort to hold themselves together.

_"Only one person was injured in the shooting; a world-renowned forensic anthropologist who has worked in close conjunction for the past six years with the FBI suffered a single round to the back." _The tastefully-posed biography photo that appeared on the back cover of all of Brennan's books was flashed on the screen in the space over the anchor's left shoulder. _"Award-winning author and murder consultant Dr. Temperance Brennan was pronounced dead at the scene. One of the shooters, twenty-six-year-old Hugh Medina," – _Brennan's picture was minimized and Medina's mug shot was posted beside it in garish contrast _– "was later taken into custody and awaits trial for the murder of Dr. Brennan, but he isn't the only offender suspected by the FBI; Officials are still on the look-out for the other man they believe is responsible for the shooting: ex-U.S. military sniper, Jacob Brodsky –"_

"I've heard enough," Hodgins stepped forward suddenly and dialled the power switch on the side of the TV, dousing the picture on the screen. Stepping back in line with the others, he wished for a moment that he had left it on; a suffocatingly thick silence ensued that was almost too much to bear while everyone struggled to digest the words they'd just been fed from the telecast. Finally, Vincent was the one to break it, his low, pensive voice sounding blaringly loud in the hush.

"I can't believe she's really gone," he muttered, half to himself, his eyes still glued to the screen, even though it had gone black. Tearing it away, he glanced around at the others' equally vacant expressions. "None of it seems real."

Cam was holding her elbow, her free hand raised to her bowed chin broodingly. Her voice, too, when she spoke, was so quiet it might not have been meant for anyone else; "Would you believe the EMT's wanted me to do the autopsy?" She mumbled docilely. Three sets of appalled eyes rounded on her.

"W-what did you say?" Angela managed in a breathy stammer.

Cam's gaze snapped up to meet hers, her dark irises rimmed with white. "I did what any of us would have done," she retorted crisply, as though this much should have gone without saying. "I told them 'no'." The team waited. Cam's glare fled sheepishly. "Only I may have used…a bit more colourful phrasing than that."

No one laughed. No one even smiled. Not so much as a single dimple-twitch was to be witnessed amidst the group.

"So…" Hodgins' sounded hoarse and slightly nauseous, as though he had some horrible premonition about being the one to point out the elephant in the room. He had his hands buried in the pockets of his lab coat and was pivoting on the spot slightly on his heels, looking painfully lost. "What do we do now?"

No one had to ask what he meant. As if on cue, every member of the team turned their gazes to the remains on Table Four – those of the thirty-two-year-old female burn victim. All of a sudden there was an air of abandonment about them that couldn't be defined scientifically; it was as though she were condemned to wait in a state of limbo now forever. If bones could look expectant, these did. They'd spent the morning surrounded by a kind of bubble of taboo, no one daring to go within a certain proximity to them on account of the fact that they could suddenly identify with them on far too personal a level; they too, felt caught in limbo. Abandoned. Lost.

"Well," Cam answered finally, assuming an almost exceedingly practical tone in an attempt to smother the uneasiness, "we'll go on doing what we do best; we'll find a way to finish this case."

The team's gazes turned back to her, all of them incredulous. As per usual, Hodgins articulated the thoughts that were blaring in everyone's mind. "_How_?" He demanded, his pale eyes moistening.

Cam drew in a deep breath, steeling herself. "There are other forensic anthropologists out there, Dr. Hodgins. Granted, none that could ever do what Dr. Brennan did half as well as she could, but forensic anthropologists none the less. I assume there must be one who will at least be competent enough to solve this case…"

"Cam." It was Angela's voice that piped up now, still sounding so frail a feather might have been able to shatter it. "No offense, but Brennan was the one who brought us all together. She rescued me from a pocket-salary caricaturist job in the park…she hired Hodgins straight out of his doctorate as her own personal entomologist for her department. Vincent was _her _intern. Even you," – she waved an indicative hand at Cam – "as head of the forensics department, were hired for the sole purpose of being her supervisor. Booth got us all into the crime-fighting gig because of her…. Without her we're just…a group of people standing in a room for no reason; a bug-guy, an artist, a Federal coroner and a student squint – what do any of us have in common, really? She was the reason for all of us being here. She was the center. She and Booth. With her gone," Angela shrugged with that same air of aimlessness her husband had showed, "what's the point?"

During her speech Angela's voice had reached the high, pinched timbre that usually preceded tears, and now Hodgins stepped forward to drape an arm soothingly across her shoulders. Cam listened quietly until she was finished and when she was, she levelled her with a meaningful gaze. "Angela," she addressed her coolly, her tone almost mothering in its rationality, "we're all hurting right now. A lot. I know you loved Dr. Brennan just as much as the rest of us – maybe even more – but don't go making any decisions you're going to regret later, at least until the smoke clears. Alright?" Cam fired a prompting eyebrow-raise at her and Angela, after a brief pause, nodded tightly.

"Hey, speaking of Booth," Hodgins chimed then while Angela raised a hand to dab at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips, "has anyone seen him since Memorial Park yesterday?"

Cam shook her head. "Caroline and Sweets were with him at J. Edgar Hoover after the shooting; apparently he went ballistic on Medina in the interrogation room – just about punched the man's lights out before he had to be detained by security."

Hodgins raised his eyebrows commiseratively. "Can anyone blame him?" He shrugged, glancing at the others before his eyes landed defensively on Angela. "I'd have probably done the same thing…."

"After that," Cam went on, her tone ominous, "no one's seen him."

Angela sniffed back more tears. "Someone should go check on him," she said, her willowy voice suddenly thick with concern.

"I hardly think I need supervision." Booth's voice, like the rest of theirs, was dim and fragile as the rest of the team turned to see him standing with one foot on the bottom step of the forensics platform. He was wearing a clean shirt and tie, but his suit jacket was missing; whether he'd forgotten it, or simply hadn't cared enough to put it on, it was impossible to say. Though still maintaining his aura of rugged handsomeness, there were dark half-moons under his eyes, and his skin looked as though it could melt off his face – it was as though he had aged ten years overnight. His back was arched as though a heavy weight was sitting right on top of it, his broad shoulders slumped as he supported himself on the railing of the stairs with one hand.

Cam swivelled on the spot to face him. "Are you alright?" She asked, quietly so the question was between them, opting not to bother with greetings.

The answer leapt readily from his lips. "I'm fine, Cam," he almost snapped in response, his tone flat and polished as steel. "I've been in a war, remember? I've dealt with death before."

Cam blinked, mentally back-reeling. "Yeah," she breathed, "but –"

"I came to see if there was anything I could do."

Cam was silent for a moment, working to swallow his stoniness. Quickly deciding that if denial of emotional pain was the best coping technique Booth had then she shouldn't try to hinder it, Cam rifled through the zillions of tasks typhooning in her brain for something, _anything _she could unload on Booth to at least keep his mental processes occupied. She'd already notified Brennan's father and brother about her death – that had been a pleasant experience – made a memo to arrange for someone to clean out her office – she couldn't bring herself to actually make the call just yet…. Then she hit on something. "Uh…" she gauged his steadiness carefully. "Brennan's car still needs to be picked up from the dealer…"

Booth dipped his chin in a single nod. "I'll do it later today." His dark eyes, seeming somehow now more black than the warm brown they usually were, then flicked to Hodgins. "Hodgins," he addressed him suddenly, prompting the entomologist to look up in surprise. Booth raised a hand and gestured to him with wagging fingers. "Can I talk to you for a sec?"

Hodgins blinked, startled. For a moment he found himself sifting through his most recent interactions with Booth to try and think of anything he might have done wrong. Coming up with nothing, he nodded blankly and brought both hands together at waist-height to remove his gloves. "Uh…sure." He tried to keep his tone and his step light and he descended the steps to the forensic platform, Booth waiting for him at the bottom like some weathered marble statue, and led him down the hall into his office. Closing the door discretely behind him, he turned, moving to cross his arms over his chest as he faced Booth, but then abruptly let them drop back to his sides again when the pungency of stale alcohol suddenly hit his senses with a full-on assault. "Whoa, Booth," he breathed, taking a step back and shaking his head as though he could dispel the odour. Then he levelled the agent with an alarmed glare. "Are you _drunk_?" He demanded, his ginger eyebrows nearly disappearing into his hairline.

Booth's flat-line expression didn't change. "No," he answered evenly, slowly, as though he were working to check his temper. "I had a drink last night to help me get to sleep and forgot to brush my teeth when I woke up this morning, okay?" His voice was silky, patient, and yet there was still an edge of defensiveness to it. The truth was he'd downed a bottle of vodka almost immediately after getting home the night before, then promptly blasted it against the wall when it only seemed to inflame as opposed to douse the welt of things he had been feeling; he had been reminded of his father, the way he used to use alcohol to drown his sorrows, to make him feel like he didn't care when he smacked his kids around. Jared had done the same thing for years, relying on the numbing effects of drinks as though they could actually have any diminishing effect on real problems. It was something Booth swore he would never be mindless enough to do. Considering this, in that moment he'd been filled with more self-loathing than he'd experienced even since severing ties with Brennan. After that, he hadn't managed to close his eyes once the entire night.

Hodgins appraised him with a dubious once-over, but decided not to press the matter; if anyone deserved a little moral leeway right now, it was Booth. "I didn't get much sleep last night, either," he admitted, settling instead on an anecdotal segue. As he divulged, his voice grew quiet, sombre. "Angela – she's having trouble…coping. I woke up four times last night to find her wandering around the house, trying to call Brennan's cell."

A stoniness entered Booth's eyes at the ring of his partner's name, but he otherwise didn't react. Hodgins continued.

"I would remind her, she'd fall apart and we'd go back to bed, then it would happen again a few hours later; every time she woke up she was convinced it had all been a dream…." Hodgins raised his arms again, hugging himself as he shook his head and lowered his gaze to the floor. "I know how she feels," he confessed tightly. "I wish it had been."

Booth continued to stare at Hodgins stoically, apparently apathetic to his suffering. He waited a beat for the ripple of agony that coursed through his chest, threatening to rent it apart, to pass. Then he took a breath. "Hodgins, there's something I wanted to ask you," he began when he could speak nonchalantly again, all business.

Hodgins' features rearranged themselves and he straightened, conforming again to Booth's air of professionalism. "Sure," he shrugged, quizzical. "What's up?"

Finding himself suddenly unable to maintain eye contact with Hodgins, Booth forced another deep breath through his system. "When Bones was, um…" he closed his eyes, blocking out the flashback. "Before she…before you guys got there she said something about…that you had something."

Hodgins cocked a lost eyebrow. "Okay…." He waited for more.

Booth had to clear the emotion out of his throat before he could continue. "She said… 'Get it from Hodgins', like there maybe was something you had that was meant for me at some point."

Hodgins looked more ill-informed than ever. "'Get it from Hodgins'," he repeated with an aimless shake of his head, working to get a grasp on whatever the words meant. "Get what from Hodgins? What were you two talking about at the time?"

Booth answered almost before he was finished, sensing they were closing in on the heart of the matter. "Nothing, I don't know," he responded quickly, then backpedalled, dancing torturously close to a memory he'd hoped never to have to watch play out again. "I mean…we were just…" he shrugged, his dark eyes darting around the room at the shelves of heat-lighted insect aquariums as though he might find the answer in one of them. He landed them back on Hodgins, feeling shaky. "She just said it," was all he could manage concerning that conversation. "I figured you'd know what she meant, that maybe it was something concerning the case…?" He let the implication dangle, hoping it would prompt some sort of epiphany in Hodgins, but the bug guy just looked more perplexed, and more apologetic than ever.

"I'm sorry, Booth," he said, shaking his head helplessly. "I have…no idea…." He wracked his brains, hoping something might go 'ping' last-minute. Nothing did. At Booth's crest-fallen expression Hodgins softened suddenly, altering tactics. "She was in a lot of pain," he offered delicately, eager to appease Booth with at least _some _kind of explanation, however scant. He had come to him for answers, after all. Hodgins shrugged. "She probably didn't know –"

"Yeah," Booth cut him off, not wanting to think about this. He dug his knuckles into his hips and closed his eyes again for a moment, the steeliness re-entering his voice. "Yeah, I figured." He forced another steadying breath. When he looked up at Hodgins again it was with an expression like he'd just asked him if he could help him move furniture. "Well," he sighed, light as a dramedy, "worth a shot. Thanks anyway." He moved to shoulder past Hodgins toward the door, but the entomologist side-stepped in front of him, barricading his exit for a moment.

"Booth," he addressed him from under judiciously-raised brows, his voice suddenly candid and his arms still crossed, "it's okay to grieve, man. The whole thing's still very…" he shrugged again, "fresh. There's no shame in feeling totally down on the world right now, to remember things, maybe even to feel a little guilty –"

Suddenly Booth bristled. "What the hell would I have to feel guilty about?" He demanded then in a dangerous half-whisper.

A warning flag went up in Hodgins' brain. _That hit a nerve, _he thought. "Nothing," he answered hastily, his voice leaping up an octave. "I just meant we all –"

"I'm doin' just fine, Hodgins," Booth practically barked in response, his fists compressing tighter on his hips. "I've had plenty of experience losing people to maniacs like Brodsky and I'm going to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Hodgins was quiet for a moment, eyeing Booth cagily. "Okay…" he conceded finally, albeit reluctant. "Just remember, if you need anything…"

Again, Booth didn't bother waiting for him to finish. "Tell you what," he snapped, fighting to keep his voice even as he towered over Hodgins, "you just worry about your little bug pals here," – he waggled a hand trivializingly around the office – "and I'll worry about catching a murderer, okay? Sound like a plan?"

Hodgins let the concern on his features to fall away acquiescently, doing his best not to look stung. "Okay," he muttered, his lips coming together in a defeated frown.

"Okay." Booth clapped his hands together in front of him in a business-like manner before he proceeded around Hodgins to the door. This time the squint made no move to stop him. ***

Booth steeled himself for what felt like the thousandth time in a twenty-four-hour period as his cab pulled into the driveway of the dealership where Brennan had left her car when it ran out of gas – had it only been the day before? It seemed like a lifetime ago, now. And in a way, Booth supposed it was.

No. He couldn't let himself think like that. In the army they had taught him to be unfeeling in the face of death, that the minute you let yourself fall apart because of something you had no power to change, you would no longer be of any use in combat. He had to compartmentalize like Bones. He had to keep his head in the game. And what the hell had Hodgins meant about him feeling guilty for Brennan's death? Did he somehow think it had been _his _fault? Did everyone? He wouldn't blame them if they did, but it only reinforced the grim knowledge that from here on out he was alone in this. He would have to do what he could and make things right by making sure Brodsky was put away and they threw away the key, or worse. He had to really do it this time. He had to make it final. In fact, if he ever laid eyes on Brodsky again, he promised himself, he would kill him, even if it meant being locked away himself for the rest of his life. It was what had to be done. _Uh huh, _an incriminating voice from somewhere deep inside his psyche suddenly piped up. _And then what? _Challenging. _Then you're going to have to feel something. Once all this is over and the situation is fixed and the balance of karma in the world is restored thanks to you and your ego, _then _you're going to have to come to terms with losing her, somehow. How, Booth? _Nagging. _How are you planning to do that? _It was as though he were planning to scale Everest naked, with no climbing tools or breathing equipment; his subconscious was clearly doing its best to tell him it was impossible, utterly and completely ludicrous. And the truth was he had no answer for it. Not yet, anyway. At the moment he wasn't thinking that far ahead. Anything beyond ending Brodsky was just…darkness.

Stepping out of the cab, he thanked the driver and handed him the payment through the half-open driver's side window, then turned to face the vehicle that had been left out for him by the dealer, gas tank refuelled and keys left in the ignition. The man had had no idea that the person coming to pick it up would be doing so on behalf of a dead woman. For too long a minute, Booth merely stood where he was and stared at it, scrutinizing its chic exterior and tinted windows as though it were evidence in a case. Another tremor in his heart. A hairline fracture in the foundation. He could feel memories pressing around the edges of his consciousness. Stepping forward and climbing into the driver's seat, he fought them back.

He took a brief look around before starting the ignition; there was a to-go cup from their favourite coffee cart in the park in one of the cup holders, still a quarter full with cold, stale brew; she'd left work-out clothes from her martial arts class in the back seat, folded neatly, very _Brennanite_; there was a stack of signed copies of her book on the seat next to them – with a twinge Booth realized those would probably be worth a fortune now. From the rear-view mirror, on a dollar-store pull-chain, hung the figurines he'd given her of Brainy Smurf and Jasper the Pig. All at once Booth felt like he couldn't breathe. He remembered the other thing Hodgins had told him; _It's okay to remember things…._

Booth swallowed hard to dislodge the lump in his throat and focused his attention on putting the car in gear. Piloting it out of the parking lot and onto the freeway, he could feel the tension, the feeling like his insides were tangled so tightly together he would never be able to tell them apart again, beginning to abate, ever so slightly. _You've just got to find something to distract yourself_, he told himself pragmatically, searching the front seat for something, _anything _that might take his focus off Bones. He leaned across the center consul and opened the glove compartment, slamming the door a millisecond later on a shower of evidence bags. "Okay…." Deep breath. He reached for the dashboard, punching in the dial for the radio and cranking up the volume. Unfortunately, it was still tuned to the eighties station he and Bones liked.

_"Some boys – take a beautiful girl and hide her away from the rest of the world; I wanna be the one to walk in the sun. Oh, girls – they wanna have fu-un. Oh, girls just wanna have…that's all they really want…some fun…."_

"Oh, come on!" Booth nearly slammed his forehead off the bridge of the steering wheel – what had been the chances of that song being aired just as he'd turned the dial hoping for a distraction from the other person he could ever imagine singing it? "Are you kidding?" He changed the channel, scanning until he found a station that was as unlikely as any to chafe against any tender memories. It was seventies' hard rock. A new song was just beginning, and he turned up the volume a little louder. That's when he recognized the opening thrums of _Foreigner_. He raised his eyes heavenward. "Really?" He intoned in the same moment that the electric guitar chords of _Hot Blooded _took up the melody. All at once he felt utterly scandalized, almost as if he were being punished for something. ***

_Hodgins was stuck underground. He didn't know how far down, only that it was far enough that if he didn't figure out a way out he was going to die. They were both going to die. His leg, haemorrhaged to the point of internal bleeding, was screaming a white-hot agony like he had never experienced. Even so he managed to focus. He had to get it done…._

_ Autographing the bottom of the page, below the elaborately-scrawled letter, he folded the scrap of paper in fours and removed the pen cap from between his teeth, returning it to the ball-point. In doing so he realized he had never felt such a sense of fulfillment in his life, of satisfaction that at least one thing, one tiny, insignificant thing, was going to be alright. Was going to end well, or at least the way it should, the way he wanted it to._

_ "Was that a note to Angela?" Brennan's face, pale and stress-worn as his, appeared around the headrest of the driver's seat as he tucked the folded paper into the inside breast pocket of his jacket."_

_ "Yes," he replied, hoarse with the pain and deprivation of sufficient oxygen. "Just in case. If whatever you're going to do to me sends me into shock, I might die." He tried to inject a bit of lightness into his rasping voice. "Upside? Me not breathing doubles your survival time."_

_ Brennan levelled him with a reproving look, the way a teacher might when chastising a pupil for saying something immature. "I'm not interested in surviving that way," she told him earnestly. Then she raised the open pocket knife she'd been sterilizing in the front seat and perched herself up over the center consul, so she was squared over Hodgins' ballooned, discoloured femur. They exchanged a few more words, about how crazy Hodgins was for Angela, and then all he remembered was pain. Blinding, brain-impeding, teeth-grinding pain. Without even really being aware of it, he released a muffled scream around the tourniquet Brennan had placed between his teeth. Then the world went black. ***_

_ Brennan stabbed at the spare tire through the trunk compartment in the back seat until she felt the knife spear rubber, and a puncture of air was released with a pressurized wheeze into the interior of the car. She and Hodgins inhaled deeply, drinking in the respiratory sustenance, only now realizing how much their lungs had been missing it. Finally, for the briefest of moments, they were able to think clearly. "How much extra time?" Hodgins wanted to know, his voice even drier than it had been._

_ "A little." Brennan herself sounded startlingly faint as she rested her temple against the seat back inches from where Hodgins was doing the same, closing her eyes to relish the feeling of oxygen flooding to her brain. "Four other tires, but we can't get to them." She opened her eyes again and regarded Hodgins with two beseeching turquois irises. "Is there anything else?" She sounded almost desperate._

_ Regrettably, Hodgins could offer her no hope. "If the ransom was paid," he reasoned, certain that if anyone could handle the grim truth it was Brennan, "we'd be out by now. Why prolong the inevitable?"_

_ At this a steely resolve entered Brennan's eyes. "Booth will find us," she stated, as matter-of-factly as if she'd been asserting that one-plus-one equals two. _

_ Hodgins looked almost envious of her optimism. "You have a lot of faith in Booth," he remarked, sounding dubious, but amused._

_ Brennan shook her head against the seat back. "No," she argued. "Faith is an irrational belief in something that is logically impossible. Over time I've seen what Booth can do. It's not faith."_

_ Hodgins considered this briefly and then smirked, his eyelids starting to droop with the stupor of suffocation. "No offense," he groaned, suddenly wishing he could just die right now and get it over with, "and I'm not just saying this because you filleted me with a knife – we're out of air. We don't know if our message got out, much less if anyone understood it. And we are buried underground." He locked his gaze on Brennan's despairingly. "What you have is faith, baby." At the little blunder of endearment, both of them cracked a miniscule smile. "Sorry," Hodgins apologized, closing his eyes as a blush worked its way into his already rosy complexion. "The baby thing is a reflex."_

_ Suddenly Brennan raised a hand and placed gentle fingertips over his lips. "You shouldn't talk right now," she half-whispered. "To conserve air." Hodgins didn't argue. Their barely-audible murmurings, more intimate than they had ever become before throughout their working relationship, sounded deafeningly loud in the eerie stillness of their subterranean grave. Brennan's head, resting against the seatback inches from his, somehow felt miles away. ***_

_ Triumphant laughter bubbled from the backseat of the car as carbon dioxide fizz effervesced in the petri dish Hodgins held in the palm of his hand, having just mixed in the catalyst that completed the recipe for oxygen; as he'd so wittily put it earlier, he was going to try to "pull some thin air out of thin air", the same way Brennan had "performed surgery out of thin air". And, much to his exuberance, it had actually worked._

_ Grinning exultantly, Brennan wasted no time in shifting forward and hoisting herself back up over the center consul into the front seat. "That gives us just long enough," she grunted as she lowered herself into the driver's seat behind the wheel, taking up the tangle of wires she'd been working on earlier._

_ Hodgins looked up. "For what?"_

_ "My next idea, which will kill us."_

_ Hodgins swiped at the sweat on his forehead with the back of one hand, suddenly feeling feverish. "What is it?" He asked, almost afraid to know._

_ Brennan forced a deep breath through her system and glanced back over her shoulder, squaring gazes with him. "Airbags," was all she said in response._

_ Hodgins blinked incredulously. "They're not actually bags of air," he modified, thinking he would have thought Brennan to be a bit more sophisticated of wit than to think she could actually use them as oxygen supplements. She looked back at him again, the humoured, one-sided smirk on her features indicating she was already miles ahead of him._

_ "I'm not looking to extend our survival time," she amended, as though this should have been childishly obvious. "I'm looking to blow our way out of here."_

_ Hodgins' voice descended into a revering hush. "Using the explosives from the airbags?" He affirmed, sounding startled and awed at the same time. "That could _definitely _kill us."_

_ Brennan, still working on the wires, hitched one shoulder in a helpless shrug. "Better than doing nothing," she offered feebly in response._

_ Hodgins was quiet for a moment, thinking. Then he reached for the already-mutilated copy of _Bred in the Bone _by Temperance Brennan in his lap and tore out the dedication page with a definitive rip. He'd chosen it specifically. Extending it forward between the seats in offering, he caught Brennan's eye with a significant gaze. "Anyone you wanna say goodbye to?" He queried softly, pointedly. Brennan's eyes flickered between Hodgins and the page for the briefest of moments, considering. Then, without a word she snatched it out of his grasp, turning to flatten it over the steering wheel as though it were a writing desk and uncapping the pen Hodgins offered her with a sudden hasty purposefulness. Hodgins watched her pensively, a knowing smile lighting on his lips as she turned her back to him and started scrawling with the speed and fervour of someone whose very existence depended on it. ***_

_ "We should get as far away from the explosion as possible," Brennan advised, her eyes fixing cagily on the horn of the steering wheel as though she half-expected it to blow up in her face at any given moment._

_ "I already am," Hodgins pointed out with heavy solemnity. She glanced back at him. He held out a hand in chivalrous offering. "Care to join me?" ***_

_ "Ready?" Brennan's eyes were wide open and rimmed with red, exhausted and emotional and frightened as a child in the dark. Hodgins held the naked end of the wire that had to physically connect with hers in order to detonate. They'd already worked it out; if they were less than four feet from the surface, the burst of explosives should be enough to blast them free and save them from their live burial. If they were more than four feet down, however, the concussion from the blast would undoubtedly turn their brains to jelly. They would be dead before they even knew what had happened._

_ Swallowing hard, Hodgins nodded, his throat feeling suddenly dry. "Yeah," he breathed, steeling himself and bringing his wire closer to the one in her hand. Then he paused, feeling the sting of tears press at the corners of his eyes, his throat knot up in an unexpected tangle of emotion. Looking up, he locked eyes with Brennan and saw that hers, too, were shining under a glaze of fear and sadness. He hated seeing her like that. He just wanted to see her as his boss again; the one who chastised him like a little kid when he caused trouble in the lab or yelled at him whenever he proceeded with an experiment she didn't approve of; the one he could always count on to keep him on track, to be a rock; the one he respected more than anyone else in his professional environment, maybe even in his life. In that moment he decided that was how he _would _see her. That was who she _was_, still, as hopeless and vulnerable and defeated as she seemed now. "Dr. Brennan," he addressed her with a sudden air of formality, though his voice sounded choked. He held out a hand to her. "It's been a privilege." _

_ Brennan granted his extended palm a fleeting, tearful glance, then leaned forward and enveloped him in a crushingly tight embrace, which he returned ardently. In that moment he felt their relationship as boss and employee fall away like a veil, revealing the tragic and beautiful face of friendship underneath. He held onto her as his last lifeline, his last living connection in this world, thinking of all the people he wished he could see, and yet at the same time finding himself satisfied that he was here going through this with her. When they finally drew apart, it was with a steely resolve of the task at hand. Hodgins heard her take a deep breath in the same moment he did, and they both concentrated their gazes on the corresponding wires. He heard Brennan stop breathing, her fingers trembling as they brought the wire end closer to his, closing the distance. He inched his in…. When they were nearly touching, Brennan started to turn her face away toward his shoulder, unwilling to face the indubitable violence of the end when it came. Hodgins forced himself to look at it. Closer…. His free hand squeezed hers as the last few millimeters between the wires were crossed, and then the world exploded in a blinding, ultimate flash of white. ***_

Hodgins started awake in his bed, gulping in air as he came up on one elbow, fighting down the sensation of his lungs filling with quarry gravel. Breathing deeply, he brought one hand up to his eyes and concentrated on trying to settle his heart rate. The skin of his face felt hot and feverish, goosebumps rising on his bared chest. The sheets around him were damp with sweat. He hadn't had one of those nightmares in years. Not since Heather Taffet had been put away, but even so it seemed the images could still return to haunt him with a vengeance; even moreso, now that he was the only one around still who remembered. At this thought he suddenly felt a wave of grief overwhelm him, crashing high over his head with all the crushing, drowning power of a tsunami. All these years since that horrifying, traumatizing day, Hodgins had comforted himself with the knowledge that at least he hadn't been the only one who'd had to experience it. At least he wasn't alone in his post-traumatic suffering. Now he was.

Pushing this rather dismal thought to the back of his mind, Hodgins rolled over on the mattress to find it vacant beside him. The space was empty, the impression in the pillow where his wife's head would have normally been still visible. He groaned inwardly. _Here we go again_, he thought gloomily, and turned back to swing his legs over the side of the bed, sighing heavily as he pushed himself to his feet. Padding across the hardwood floor to the bedroom door, he followed the sound of girlish snivelling down the hall into the nursery, where he found Angela curled in the rocking chair in the corner in the dark, almost in the fetal position herself, as she cradled Michael close to her body and sobbed into his tiny cotton sleeper, rocking the chair back and forth on her toes as she did so.

"Angie…" Hodgins glided angelically across the room toward her silhouette, lowering himself onto the arm of the rocker next to her and draping a tender arm across her bare shoulders. They were warm like his, and heaving.

Almost immediately upon his arriving there, Angela's impassioned whimpers hitched, and she made an effort to speak; "We have to have another baby," she blubbered, somewhat arbitrarily and without looking up from her son.

Hodgins blinked and drew back half an inch. "What?"

"A girl." The response was hair-trigger on Angela's full lips. "And we have to name her Temperance." Her features crumpled again and she finally turned her face up to Hodgins, her tear-tightened, almost-closed eyes imploring. "So she can have another chance," her voice broke and her voice was once again pitched on the storm of sobs. "She deserves another chance."

Hodgins' features softened then as he looked at his wife; torn apart from the inside out and utterly destroyed as she was, she was still beautiful. Massaging her shoulder with the hand he held around her, he leaned down and planting a soothing, adoring kiss in her waterfall of black hair. Angela cried harder. "We have to name her Temperance…" she muttered, the timbre of her voice rising.

Hodgins closed his eyes and nodded, his forehead rubbing against her temple in a commiserative caress. "We will," he promised, if only to placate her. To be honest the last thing he found himself able to think about at the moment was bringing another child into the world. This cruel, grief-polluted world. It was at times like this he almost wished he himself had never been born. Times like this, and times like in his dream, when it seemed like all there was – and all there ever would be – was darkness. During that horrible time down in the dark in the car, he remembered thinking the only light remaining in his world was that which radiated from memories of Angela. Angela; his life, his reason for staying alive. He remembered writing that letter to her in hopes that it might in return be a light for her in the dark times ahead after his death. That it might bring her some hope, and that she might find some comfort in knowing the truth about his feelings for her. Every unabashed inkling. At least, if nothing else, it would let her know she was loved, that she had been special, unconditionally and irrevocably precious to someone in this life. That knowledge would have been his final gift to her.

At that moment Hodgins felt something stir in the depths of his subconscious, and he raised his face out of Angela's hair, staring focusedly over her head at nothing. For some reason he found himself thinking of Booth, how now they were all trapped in the dark again, and he was the one who needed a light more than anyone. That's when it clicked; as if by some bizarre twist of circumstance, Hodgins realized he had the power to give it to him. All at once he didn't feel so bad about being the only one left who remembered, because it meant that he and he alone had what no one else had never even known about. _"Get it from Hodgins," _Booth had told him Brennan had said. Only now did he finally realize what she must have meant.


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note: Contains spoilers for The Widow's Son in the Windshield (Season 3) and The Conman in the Meth Lab (Season 4), as well as a few others but they're short.**

**Chapter 9: Legacy**

Across town, at that very moment in his own apartment, Booth had somehow managed to slip into an unexpected slumber, the last remnants of his consciousness sending up a little red warning flag in his brain before exhaustion – both physical and emotional – finally got the better of him. He had been right to be wary of sleep, however; overrun with voices and reminiscences from a past he had spent the last day and a half trying to keep at bay, his subconscious was a world laced with emotional landmines – the last place he was likely to find any peace….

_The first thing he heard was his own voice, quiet, and gently probing; "Look," he murmured, "there's something else I gotta know, and it's important." She looked at him over the brim of her coffee cup from the other side of the bench, azure eyes expectant. He raised dark brown eyebrows, very slightly. "We solid?" He questioned, his voice barely above a whisper._

_ As usual, the gravity of the question soared right over Bones' head. "You and me?" She affirmed, her own voice, by contrast, brazenly loud. She sidled her eyes quizzically as though she saw no reason for them not to be. "Yeah."_

_ "No," Booth amended quickly, maintaining full seriousness, "not just you and me. The squints, too. Zack is back for good, Angela and Hodgins have their head back in the game, Cam, she's locked in…."_

_ "Why are you asking me this?" Brennan wanted to know, taking a cavalier sip of her coffee while she waited for the answer._

_ Booth's response was tender, pressing as though this part should have been obvious, but he was more than happy to explain it to her. "Because," he replied quietly, "you and me…we're the center." He watched as understanding dawned on Brennan's features._

_ "And the center must hold," she added serenely, one corner of her mouth lifting in an appreciative half-smile._

_ Booth raised his own take-out cup in concurrence. "Right," he agreed. "So, are we gonna hold?" He regarded her with a seriousness that made Brennan consider his original question in a fresh light._

_ She thought about it this time for a moment, giving it the appropriate consideration. "Yeah," she answered finally, the smile still playing on her lips. "We'll hold." She shrugged as though this were a straight-forward enough conclusion to come to. "We're the center."_

_ Booth returned the smile and touched the edge of his coffee cup to hers with a muted, Styrofoam tap. "The center." He toasted. ***_

_ The memory reeled forward a year as though Booth were watching play out on the big screen that was his life. He and Bones were standing in the main bar area of the Founding Fathers – well, _he _was sitting; she was standing, her right arm crooked in a sling at the elbow, her left raised and brandishing a glass of red wine in his direction. Others were gathered around that he recognized; other squints from the lab, Angela and Cam and Sweets, and his brother Jared, among others. With a pang of bitterness he heeded the bandaged suspension of her dominant arm, remembering the bullet she had taken arguing with him over who would shoot the gunman in a hostage situation they'd encountered earlier in the case; in the end it had turned out to be him, and she had been immensely lucky. It could have been so much worse…._

_ "I would like to propose a toast," Bones declared, taking the floor and looking around at the others, "to my partner, Seeley Booth."_

_ A miniscule smile lighted on Booth's lips; it always struck him as foreign or unnatural whenever Bones used his first name, whether or not she was addressing him personally. But it was a good foreign. The exotic kind of foreign you wanted to get to know more of._

_ "I know who he is," Brennan went on, an uncharacteristic touch of sentiment colouring her tone, "but I forget sometimes, because…" she paused, thinking, "because he never shines a light on himself. He shines it on other people." She squared gazes with Booth and received a derisive smirk._

_ "Yeah," he agreed wryly, raising the neck of his beer to his lips, "right after I conked 'em on the head with it." There was a ripple of appreciative laughs. Brennan blew past this with little more than a tolerant smile._

_ "Anthropology teaches us," she persisted, and Booth just managed to curb an eye-roll, "that the alpha male is the man wearing the crown, displaying the most colourful plumage and the shiniest baubles. He stands out from the others, but I now think that anthropology could have it wrong." At this Booth blinked in surprise and straightened a little in his chair, uncertain he'd heard her correctly. "In working with Booth," Brennan continued, eyes dropping to the floor a bit sheepishly, "I've come to realize that the quiet man, the invisible man, the man who is always there for friends and family – that's a real alpha male." Again, her eyes found Booth's, locked in. "And I promise that my eyes will never be caught by those…shiny baubles again." She raised her glass higher. "Happy birthday, Booth."_

_ Glasses glinted into the air around the room, and a chorus of "To Booth," echoed Brennan's prompt. Still, the only toast he'd had ears for had been hers. ***_

Booth drew in a sharp breath through his nose and lifted his head out of the cradle of his arms as if he were breaking the surface of water and drinking in his first life-giving gulp of air. He remained like that for a moment, hunched over the bar in his kitchen, leaflets from case files on Brodsky strewn about his elbows. Shaking off the temporary disorientation, he groaned and raised a hand to his eyes, forcing himself up straighter in the chair. How was he supposed to concentrate on catching a killer when his emotions kept creeping in on him like a saboteur screaming for his attention? He was beginning to see why agents with personal involvement in a case were generally pulled off it on principle, but Brodsky had a personal vendetta against him. In his case, it really was between him and the ex-sniper. There was no one else who could take his place. Not to mention he _wanted _to catch Brodsky. More than that, he felt he _had _to be the one to do it. There was no other option. If Booth didn't have that, he didn't have anything. And the longer he allowed that monster to have free reign in the country he loved, the less like a victory catching him would finally feel.

Once he was sure the dream had been effectively dismissed to the back of his mind, Booth choked down a sip of the ice-cold coffee sitting on the bar next to him and did his best to refocus his attention on the case files, perching his temples between his hands. The cuffs of his sleeves were unbuttoned and ruffled next to his cheeks, his tie slung loosely from his throat. It occurred to him that he hadn't changed since he'd thrown on the only clean clothes he could find that morning before going to the Jeffersonian; the bloodstained suit was still in his laundry basket….

Groaning again, a bit more ardently this time so it sounded more like a growl of frustration, Booth squinted at the typed print on the page in front of him and tried to force it into the registry of his mind. The words only reached his eyes and then bounced off him as though his brain were imbued with some kind of information force field. Exasperated, he let his forehead fall back onto the kitchen counter, pillowing his eyes against his arm and closing them in hopes of some reprieve. Out of nowhere, and entirely without meaning to, he flashed on an image of Brennan's face – a sneak-attack on his groggy consciousness.

Opening his eyes again, he bolted upright in the chair, removing his arms from the bar top and checking his watch in mild curiosity. If he wasn't going to be able to focus on the Brodsky case, he would have to do something to occupy his brain for the remaining hours of the night, at least until he could think straight again. He _definitely _wasn't even going to consider going back to sleep….

It took him under five minutes to figure it out. Getting up from the stool, Booth left the open case files where they were and reached for his house keys with one hand and a jacket that matched the shirt he had on sufficiently enough with the other. Then, without giving himself time to give any more thought to the matter, he headed for the door and the one activity he'd always resorted to the last time he found himself traumatized with no one to turn to. ***

Cam felt laughably out of place as she stepped into the pool hall early the following morning. She had managed to find the only establishment in the city that was open around the clock, and she was dressed in her best collared blouse and overcoat, complete with an ankle-length skirt, all black. A few heads turned her way as she marched across the bar floor toward the playing tables. She couldn't have cared less.

She spotted him almost instantly, still clad in the same dishevelled white shirt and tie she'd seen him in almost twenty-four hours ago, his upper body craned over the trajectory of a pool cue. As she approached, she watched him sink the eight-ball, the last solid ball on the table. Cash changed hands just before she reached him. "Okay, Booth," she half-barked, startling him into looking her way. "Let's go."

Booth's eyes, aged and blood-shot, hardened upon seeing her. "How'd you know I was here, Cam?" He queried, drawing himself up and avoiding eye contact under the pretence of counting the money in his hand. His opponent excused his massive, tattooed self and ambled off in the direction of the bar, leaving them alone.

"Please," Cam scoffed when she was sure the biker was out of earshot, working to temper her indignation at finding him here; in truth she had only come on a hunch, but had been hoping for all the world that she was wrong. "You stopped gambling when you met Brennan. It wasn't that big of a leap to figure out where you were when you mysteriously dropped off the face of the earth this morning. You weren't at home or at the office…."

All at once Booth felt his temper rear up in offense. "And what makes you think it's your business to keep tabs on me twenty-four hours a day?" He challenged, affronted at the very idea that she'd checked into all of his personal drop stations.

Cam didn't flinch. She could see the exhaustion in Booth's eyes, the edginess in his body language; the events of the past few days had almost been too much for him to take. Needless to say, she didn't think it rational in any sense of the word to take his testiness personally. She knew Booth well enough to know that when Booth got sad, he got angry. "I went to your apartment this morning to pick you up for the funeral," she illuminated patiently.

Booth took a step back then, his eyes taking the gloomy hue of her wardrobe and the twist of her hair at the back of her head in a sombre bun as though seeing them for the first time. Then the steeliness returned to his mocha irises. "I'm not going," he grumbled, turning away and leaning over the table to rack up the balls again.

Cam narrowly refrained from doing a full-on forehead slap. With a twinge of grief and a stirring of irony she recalled she and the rest of the team having the same problem with Brennan when they thought Booth had been killed and the government had staged a funeral for him. They'd almost had to fireman's-carry her kicking and screaming out of the lab, and if it hadn't been for Angela's gentle beseeching, they may very well have had to resort to that. It occurred to her that Booth was far too big even for Hodgins to sling over his shoulder and hike to the cemetery; she wondered if one of the tranquilizer guns from the early explorer exhibit might work….

"Don't you even try arguing with me, big man," Cam contested with an adamant shake of her head. "She was your partner. She deserved to have you there…"

"She was my _responsibility_," Booth modified sharply, half-turning his head from what he was doing to address her. Then he looked back down at the table, cue stick propped under one shoulder. "She still is," he added in a quieter voice, a more heartfelt voice. "I've got a murderer to catch, Cam."

At this Cam almost snorted. "Yeah, I can see you're making great headway on that," she retorted dryly, eyeing the pool table with an unsympathetic dubiousness. She saw the well-defined muscles in Booth's back tense and his movements freeze and for a moment she was afraid he was going to round on her. Then he seemed to think better of it and his business with the racking resumed, though the stiffness of his motions remained. "You can worry about Brodsky after the funeral," Cam altered tactics, regrouping. "The case can wait a few more hours for you to pay your respects and give a eulogy…"

Now Booth did round on her. "Whoa," he interjected, the set of his jaw congealing as he turned and held up an arresting palm toward her, his full attention drawn from the table. "What?"

Cam didn't have to ask what he meant; even so she was startled that he'd even questioned it. "You've got to give a eulogy, Booth," she appealed, sounding shocked that he wouldn't want to. "Her father's way too much of a mess to do it and you knew her better than anyone…"

Again, Booth didn't give her a chance to finish pleading her case. Stepping forward, he towered over her, his face opening to reveal layers of hurt and vulnerability underneath the mask. "Cam," he began, a fracture in his voice veining through the one word. "I'm as tough as any man out there, but the only reason I'm managing to keep it together, is because I have a job to do."

_This is you keeping it together? _Cam couldn't help but think as her eyes darted around at the eight-thirty-AM setting of the bar and billiard around them, though she didn't dare articulate this out loud, satisfying herself instead with a suspect raise of her eyebrows.

Booth ignored her and ploughed on, his voice hoarse with emotion. "Going to _her _funeral, giving a _tribute speech_," – he practically spat the words – "what am I supposed to say? That she had a good life and everything happens for a reason and we can't question God's decisions because he's got the whole world in his hands?" His derisive tone stung Cam in the spot in her heart where she'd once held admiration for Booth's interminable faith. Interminable until now, apparently. "I'm not sure I believe that any more, Cam," he confirmed her suspicions. "How can I believe in an all-good, all-knowing, just God who would allow something like this to happen? Bones was an incredible, selfless, beautiful person and she deserved better. She deserved…a longer life, with a more peaceful end. There is _nothing _about _any _of this that is just or fair. We all know that. So don't you dare ask me to stand up in front of a crowd of confused mourners and preach otherwise, because I won't, Cam. I can't." Somewhere around the middle of this speech the integrity in Booth's voice had completely broken down, and was now reduced to little more than a tremulous whisper. When she looked up into his face Cam saw his eyes shining with a fresh glaze of tears, and all of a sudden they looked more tired, and more hurt, than she thought she had ever seen them. Despite this, she forced herself to hold onto her resolve.

"Yes," she argued, forcing strength and evenness in to her own voice as she pinned him with a stimulating, unblinking gaze, "you can. You have to."

Booth squared her with a challenging look of his own. "Why?" He demanded, his voice still rent with emotion.

"Because!" Cam parried without missing a beat. "Because, Seeley, she went to yours." ***

The funeral was a larger affair than anyone had anticipated. People, responding to the lengthy obituary that had taken up nearly half a page of the Washington Post the day before, had flocked from distant corners of the city, even out of state. There were, of course Brennan's two family members, looking pitiably inconsequential in contrast to the sheer multitude of other figures who had come to pay their respects; nearly the entire Jeffersonian staff was there, even Micha, the night watchman, not to mention every squintern Brennan had ever had work for her, as well as some of her students from her lectures. There were people there Booth had never even met; admiring scholars and scientists, fellow professors, even some of the people he recognized from their cases who'd perhaps been rescued or reconciled by her expertise. Dr. (Chef) Wyatt had shown up, and of course Sweets – though he looked much less present in mind than he was in body – and Daisy Wick and Caroline Julian and a number of solitary men Booth assumed had had their hearts crushed by his partner…_ex_-partner, he had to remind himself. Among them he recognized Agent Sully, from back when he and Brennan had first started working together, as well as Assistant Director Hacker. He was most taken by surprise, however, by the appearance of his own brother amidst the throng; he hadn't expected to see Jared again until one of their lives was in jeopardy.

There was security, too. A lot of it. Booth's senses and experience were sharp enough to detect a respectable number of federal agents in uniform circling the premises like carrion birds, remaining at a discreet enough distance not to cause disquiet among the mourners but close enough to observe if anything cagey started to unfold.

The massive assembly was especially impressive once one took the weather into consideration; the day was a dreary one, to say the least. The sky was completely obstructed by a dense, rolling canopy of steel grey clouds, the kind that made it seem like you would never see the dazzling golden light of the sun again. Rain came down in a steady drizzle, hard enough that when Booth looked out over the congregation much of what he could see was just a platform of black umbrella crests propped over body trunks, looking like a forest of human-sized mushrooms, but not so hard as to impede progression of the service. It was certainly nothing like the clear, mild day they'd had at his funeral.

Thinking of that day, he couldn't help but remember how Brennan had looked. He'd been stealing glances at her throughout the entire service from under his cover, looking to see if she was crying or not. He'd been amused and just a little dismayed, however, to find she'd merely been fidgeting in her heels and black funeral attire, arms crossed over her chest, looking only mildly irritated and even a little bored. He believed he recalled her referring to the event as "a waste of time". That was Bones for you. Evidently she had been much better at handling such a situation than he could ever hope to be. That had been different, though, he had to remind himself as he realized with a vexed start that he had been subconsciously searching the faces in the crowd, just in case hers happened to be among them the same way his had. _Where are you? _He heard himself think, and then let his eyes sidle to the casket, forcing himself to feel the stab of grief as he tried not to think about what was inside. Feel it so he understood; this day was nothing like that one had been. This was real.

Once the crowd had been hushed and a few words of devout introduction stated, the minister half-turned in Booth's direction, his billowing robes freckled with rain water. "And now," he said, holding out a hand in offering to Booth, "I believe Special Agent Seeley Booth of the FBI would like to say a few words, as Temperence's partner and dear, dear friend."

Booth, standing in front of the gathering off to the right with his feet apart, head bowed and hands folded at his waist, lost in his own recollections, had been blocking out everything the minister had been saying up until this point. At the sound of his name, however, he looked up, an expression of outright vulnerability suddenly hijacking his features. He rearranged them immediately and, steeling himself one more time, took a deep breath and a step forward.

"Uh," he stammered, the realization that he was expected to speak just beginning to hit him now along with the shame and regret of not having bothered to prepare anything, "Temperance." He echoed the minister's formal address with a curious shake of his head. It wasn't so much a beginning as a statement in itself. "I'm not sure there is anyone here who would have actually dared to call her that." He saw one or two smiles flicker amongst the guests, and decided then and there to follow his own advice, the same he had given Bones over and over again throughout the years, and let his heart guide him.

"I guess she had a lot of names in her short life, didn't she? Born Joy Keenan, turned Temperance Brennan at a very young age for her own protection, Tempe to her family and friends, Dr. Brennan or just Brennan to her coworkers…to me, though," here he took a pause, "to me she was just Bones. Brilliant, quantifying, stubborn, courageous, passionate, tactless, rational-to-the-end Bones." Booth stopped again and wondered whether he should insert something more about who she was, define her personality a little, then he decided there was simply too much to say. So he went a different route. He was beginning to feel a tightness in his throat. "You know, looking around here at everyone today, it seems ludicrous when I tell you that she used to worry, _really _worry about not being missed once she was gone." Booth felt intrigued gazes zero in on him. He elaborated. "We had a case very recently involving an esteemed, career-driven surgeon on the coast who died and whose remains weren't discovered until almost a year later. Long story short, Bones couldn't believe that someone as influential and accomplished as Lauren Eames could simply disappear without a trace. She took the cold case to heart, and started to think that maybe if someone like Dr. Eames could be forgotten, then she could too. Of course we all know better. Even if you only ever met Bones once, I think you'll all agree she was someone you could never forget." A few nods of concurrence. Booth felt raindrops on his face, blinked through the drizzle. "A very…special person in so many ways. So different from anyone else I've ever known. If you knew nothing else about her, you knew at least that she marched to the beat of her own drum, and never failed to think outside the box. For instance, she would have thought this whole thing," Booth opened his arms to the congregation, "was ridiculous. She would have said that gathering around a hole in the ground was no saner than the tribes off in the jungles of nowhere showing their grief by burning down their village and moving to a new one. Of course she also didn't believe in life after death. She told me multiple times, throughout our years of working together, that" – he raised his fingers in air quotes – "'cellular death is cellular death'. Once your physical essence was gone, that was it. You were finished. Worm food. You could hear or feel or see nothing else for the rest of eternity." Booth rocked forward on the balls of his feet and raised two smart eyebrows at the crowd. "Good thing she was the only one who believed it." A murmur of appreciative laughter in response.

"Anyone who knew Bones well also knew that she was far too…beautiful and special and kind-hearted a person not to have something better waiting for her in the afterlife. She deserved more than just…nothingness. An end. She had to have gone on to something…_more_. How could she not have? And she _did _have a very good heart. She may have come off as a bit cold and detached and insensitive and…" – Booth drew in a sigh – "morbid, when you first met her. I know she did to me, but the more you got to know her the more you realized that that was only her mechanism for protecting what underlying was an incredibly tender and sensitive heart. A heart that was easily broken. I find it to be an incredible and unfortunate twist of fate – of course she didn't believe in that either – that it was her heart the gunman went for, because that was the only way she could have been taken down. Every other part of her was as impervious as bullet-proof glass. Every part, save for the open heart she never knew she had." Booth knew he would have to wrap it up soon or he would never be able to finish. He could feel a tremor stealing into his voice, furtive water running toward his cheekbones that he couldn't be sure was attributed to the rain, a fault line in his chest that was beginning to ripple.

"Most of you are here today to honour a brilliant, esteemed forensic anthropologist who was dedicated to her work and her writing, but I'll tell you that I am here to honour more than a colleague; I'm here to pay due tribute to…an incredible human being, a good, compassionate woman, and a stead-fast friend. If she were here today – and I'm sure wherever she is she _can _hear me – I would make a point of telling her all of this, I would tell her I was sorry I couldn't keep her from getting hurt, and I would tell her…" Booth's voice broke and he felt hot tears sear over the skin of his face, reddening it. His last words came out almost in a whisper; "I would tell her I loved her." He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. "That's all."

Booth stepped back then on the lawn, making his way toward the crowd of people and leaving the remainder of the service, as it should be, to the minister. As he absorbed himself into the throng he got the distinct feeling that if it were appropriate to applaud at a funeral, he would have received one. Cam and the rest of the forensic team were waiting for him at the front, and upon approaching Booth noted there was not a dry eye among them; least of all on Angela. When he reached them Cam placed a commiserative hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "That was beautiful, Seeley," she uttered, barely above a whisper as the minister started into a closing prayer.

Booth couldn't bring himself to look her in the eye. "Don't ever ask me to do that again," was all he said in response, the only words he could force into readiness on his lips.

Hodgins raised solicitous, ginger eyebrows. "It's generally the kind of thing you only have to do once," he remarked, tenderness tempering the wryness in his tone as he sniffed loudly and blinked back tears.

The minister tied up the service with a generic "…release her into the hands of the Lord" and the crowd began to disperse to a modest chorus of _Amazing Grace _emitting from the windpipes of one hired vocalist. Booth tried not to listen to it.

"Well," Cam intoned a bit shakily, dark eyes fixed forward on the casket, "I guess this is it." There were a few dazed nods from her coworkers and they all turned in unison to follow everyone else back to their cars, Angela sobbing her heart out into Hodgins' chest as he guided her away from the gravesite by the shoulders.

"Cam," Booth's tone was rueful when he stopped her as she turned to go, and she looked back at him with an expression of complete understanding and sympathy.

"Forget it, Seeley," she told him earnestly. "I know you well enough to know you say things you don't mean when you're hurting." She placed an adoring palm over his chest and smiled softly. "Brennan wasn't the only one with a good heart that breaks easily."

Booth lowered his gaze to the ground, having no response to this.

"We'll see you at the reception?" Cam inquired gently.

At this Booth looked up again. "I have work to do, Cam," he replied, unapologetic.

She tilted her head a bit imploringly. "Can't that wait one more day?" She entreated. "Or at least a few more hours? You need to give yourself some time to –"

"I can't, Camille," he interrupted her, his tone adamant. "This is something I have to do."

She regarded him then with a kind of pitying resignation. "Alright," she conceded after a long moment of consideration. Her tone was quiet, acquiescent, even a bit disappointed. Then she squared him with a suddenly intense gaze. "Call me if you need anything," she resolved. It was not a request. Then she turned and followed the others to the cars.

Booth waited until most of the mourners had trickled away, accepted a commiserative shoulder-squeeze from the minister as he too, departed, and then turned to look back at the casket, a guarded film over his wide brown eyes. He'd thought hard about this moment before coming, while Cam was cramming him into a clean suit jacket, straightening his tie and tearing a comb through his hair all while driving her car at the same time (he was pretty sure if she'd had access to running water and a razor she would have shaved him as well but fortunately she'd had no such resources). He knew at some point he would be faced with the inevitable dilemma of saying goodbye to Bones, but as he forced himself to consider it – not wanting to miss his last chance, if it were given him – it occurred to him that he'd never expected to make such a decision prior to three days ago. He'd never doubted the fact that he and Bones would be stuck with each other for life, but when the end came he'd always assumed for some reason that he would be the one to go first. He was the one with the gun, the combat training, and more than anything else, he was the one who would happily give his life to protect her. Apparently, though, that reality held true for her as well, and he'd never realized it.

He hadn't been planning on doing this. He didn't think it was something he _could _do, but standing here now, facing the obligation to finally walk away, he found that to be the thing that was impossible for him. Very slowly, he approached the casket. And very slowly, he placed both hands against the polished mahogany wood of the lid, letting it support his weight as he leaned forward through his shoulders. Closing his eyes, he relinquished the rest of his emotional steeliness, and let the walls down, let himself be distracted, just for a moment. Just for this last moment. The first thought that stole into his head was of the first case he and Bones had ever worked together. They hadn't exactly gotten along so peachily back then; _"You're a cold fish!" _He could remember barking at her, which she'd cleverly countered with, _"You're a superstitious moron!" "Get a soul!" _He'd said. _"Grow a brain!" _She'd parried. _"Booth!" _They'd been interrupted; both turned; _"WHAT!" _Recalling this, Booth allowed the tiniest of smiles to grace his lips. The flashback reeled forward years. _"I'm standing right beside you, Booth, like always. Like I always will."_

The smile was gone as abruptly as it had appeared. "Of all the people I've lost in my life," he intoned in a tremulous, barely audible whisper to the varnished wooden box, "all the deaths I've had to come to terms with, and all the funerals I've been to…I never thought I would be standing here at yours." He let the mass in his throat rupture, the tears flow forth from the dam. "When I walked into that lecture hall, and saw you for the first time, I had no idea then how long the road was going to be, or how…_amazing _it was going to be sharing it with you." There was a pain in his chest like he had never felt then, as though someone were driving a spear straight through his heart. He shook his head. "And I don't know how I can…just drive away without you now."

There ensued a moment of breakdown during which Booth found it impossible to speak, and instead he found himself considering all the ways in which Bones had made his life better, had enhanced his very existence. He remembered taking her to the shooting range, on Dr. Wyatt's advice, when he had to get recertified by the FBI to carry a firearm. As it turned out just having her there watching him had been enough to improve his shot. _"Your partners for Heaven's sake," _Dr. Wyatt had asserted when he'd challenged the validity of this technique. _"She counts on you for protection." _As he fired round after round into the target canvas, feeling the kick of the gun against the heel of his hand and holding it steady, he could remember reiterating two words over and over again in his head as motivation: _for her. _And when his chamber had been emptied and the canvas brought forward, every round had been dead-center.

Before he was even aware of it, Booth found himself talking again. "I'm sorry, Bones," he breathed ardently, tears pinching his voice higher. "God, I'm so sorry. I should have been able to protect you." He forced a deep, composing breath through his system. Straightening, he moved his hands away from the varnished wood to his pockets. "But I swear to you, I'm going to find Brodsky. And when I do, I'm going to make sure he never hurts anybody...ever again. That's a promise."

"I'll hold you to it." A voice Booth recognized. He started and whirled around.

"Max," he exhaled feebly, quickly putting himself together with a rearranging of his features and clearing of his throat. At the sight of Bones' father he immediately felt his heart sink nearly to the soles of his feet. Of all the hundreds of people who'd showd up for the funeral today, Max Brennan would probably have been at the bottom of the list of people Booth wanted to talk to. As usual, he was marching to the beat of his own drum, not unlike his daughter; he stood not ten feet from Booth with his hands burried in the pockets of a pistachio-brown suit and polka dotted bow tie.

"Sorry," Max apologized, holding up two relinquishing palms in Booth's direction. "I'll wait until your finished."

Booth shook his head and stepped away from the casket with only one brief backward glance. "I am," he negated hastily. "I'm finished."

His eyes moving to the ground, Max inhaled deeply and took a step toward Booth in the rain. "Did you know she was offered a state funeral?" Max queried, looking up again when he was standing directly in front of the agent.

Booth swallowed his surprise. "You declined."

Max nodded in affirmation. "Tempe would have hated it," he sighed by way of explanation. "You got one thing right up there; she definitely didn't put much credence in these," he glanced around for the right classification, "'gatherings around of holes in the ground'."

At this Booth permitted himself a miniscule chuckle. "No," he shook his head. "She did not."

"Besides," Max shrugged, going on, "the last thing we needed was another shooting massacre at my daughter's funeral."

Booth grimaced as a beat of weighty silence ensued. He forced himself to square gazes with Max, who was staring intently at him through unblinking, steel-blue eyes, so like his daughter's. "When I left her handcuffed to that bench four years ago," he began again, his tone sombre, "just as you came screaming in like a knight in shining armour in a little yellow car, I kissed her on the head, I told her I loved her...and then I turned to you, and do you remember what I said?"

Booth thought back, his expression stagnant, afraid to remember. Then he answered, his voice barely audible. "You said," - here Booth took a deep breath - "'you take care of her'." All at once he felt as though the sky were falling down around his ears, his heart breaking in entirely new places for Max, the man he now saw standing in front of him who'd lost almost every family member he'd ever had. Russ and Bones were the last two remnants of the happy life he'd once built for himself; two little pieces of a ruined empire. And now one of them was gone.

"'You take care of her.'" Max nodded as he echoed the entreaty in a half-whisper, a tear sliding over one cheek bone. He pinned Booth under a pointed gaze, and suddenly the agent found himself slowly shaking his head.

"I'm so sorry Max," he confessed earnestly, his voice threatening to break again.

At this, however, Max's brow furrowed and he tilted his head with an inquisitive smile. "I hope you don't think this was your fault."

Realizing what he'd mistaken as an accusation had merely been a statement of fact, Booth regrouped. "Not in a...direct sense, no," he replied eloquently. "Primarily I blame the man who pulled the trigger; if he hadn't been there and done that, none of us would be here today. But I should have been able to stop it." Booth removed his hands from his pockets and drove them forward and down in front of him in a little flourish of frustration. "I should have been able to do something."

Max took another step closer to Booth. "You _did _do something," he asserted abruptly, stopping at a distance where Booth wouldn't have to struggle to hear him at a whisper, and he could reach forward and place an indebted hand on Booth's shoulder. "You kept my daughter safe and happy for six years. I know I wasn't in her life much until it was almost too late, but I never saw her more vibrant, or more fulfilled, than when she was working with you. I don't regret for a second that she ever met you; because of me, she never trusted anybody. She trusted you. If she had never met you, she never would have lived at all." Max cocked his head pointedly. "And six years of that is better than a lifetime of imperviousness, wouldn't you say?"

Booth started, derailed by Max's almost word-for-word recount of what Bones had said to him when she lay bleeding in his arms. Perhaps Max had known his daughter much better than he gave himself credit for...or if not then they were uncannily similar in their reasoning. _Like father, like daughter, _he thought.

"And as for this Brodsky fellow," Max went on, drawing himself up suddenly with the air of a businessman. He eyed Booth incisively. "He's going down, right?"

Booth nodded ardently. "Without a shadow of a doubt," he affirmed.

"Good to know," Max nodded once in response, the set of his jaw taughtening in agitation. "I'd make sure of it myself, if I didn't think you deserved it more."

Admittedly, Booth was glad Max thought this way; as much as he admired the man for his fervent dedication to the protection of his family, there wasn't a doubt in his mind that Max had neither the skills nor resources to deal with someone of Brodsky's calibre, not to mention the support of the law behind him.

"But you let me know if you need any...assistance, from any outside sources," Max implored, and Booth nodded, if only to placate him.

"I'll make sure Brodsky gets what's comin' to him," he promised firmly.

Max nodded again, satisfied. "Good," he said. "Now, it seems there's something of a line forming behind me, so I'll take my leave now." Max dipped his forehead to Booth in a kind of respectful salute before turning to stride away, turning back around to walk backward a few steps as he passed Hodgins waiting by a nearby tree, having successfully deposited Angela in the car. "And Booth," he called back as though on an afterthought. Booth looked briefly from Hodgins back to Max. "Thank you for stepping in to take my place when I left a hole in my daughter's life, and in her heart." With that, Max raised a hand in definitive farewell and turned fully so the agent was waving at his back as he strode to his car.

Booth watched him go and then turned his attention to Hodgins, a curious expression hijacking his features as the squint walked towards him with a piece of white paper that was folded in threes in hand. "What's up Hodgins?" He asked as Hodgins approached, holding out the piece of paper to him in offering. "What's this?"

Hodgins held it up to his face, waiting for Booth to take it. "It's what she wanted you to have," he illuminated sombrely. "I finally remembered about it last night, because of a dream."

Before Hodgins had even gotten the second part out Booth had reached forward and swiped the paper from his fingers, his eyes sharpening as an eagerness hastened his movements. He looked down at the surface that was exposed to him between his hands and frowned in obvious consternation. "The dedication from her book?" He confirmed, shaking his head in mystification. He'd seen it before. It was from the second edition - one of the ones she'd dedicated to him. "Hodgins, I already knew about this." He shook his head in disappointment and was about to hand the paper back when Hodgins held up an arresting hand.

"Look on the other side," was all he said in instruction.

Withdrawing the page, Booth eyed Hodgins sceptically and obeyed, unfolding the page to its full dimensions and turning it over in his hands. The other side, which he hadn't been able to see through the dense, printing-press paper, was completely covered from top to bottom in neat, linear scrawl he recognized immediately as Bones' handwriting.

"It's a letter," Hodgins elucidated, a bit redundantly.

"It's...from Bones," Booth stated, double-checking the signature at the bottom and glancing up at Hodgins questioningly.

The entimologist merely nodded in response. "She wrote it four years ago, when we were both trapped in that car underground by Heather Taffet," he explained. "I wrote one too, to Angela. There were a few really scary hours down there when we knew we might very well never see any of you again, and we thought we should give ourselves the chance to say a proper goodbye." He indicated the letter in Booth's hands with his pale blue eyes. "We were the only two who knew about them. Afterwards, when we realized everything was going to be fine, we decided we obviously didn't need them anymore. On our wedding night, I gave mine to Angela, as a way of showing her how much she had always meant to me, and always would. I'm pretty sure Brennan forgot about hers, but I kept it (I was the one holding onto them in the car). I thought maybe, one day, she'd want a way of extending a similar gesture to you." Hodgins said nothing about the rather romantic notions he'd had of presenting it to the two of them as an incredibly invaluable - albeit a bit morbid - wedding gift. Doing so would mean admitting he'd been holding out hope... "I think she'd want you to read it now," he remarked instead.

"How do you know it's for me?" Booth inquired, staring hard down at the letter. "There's no formal address..."

"Read it," was all Hodgins said in response. "There's no one else it could have been meant for."

Booth looked down at the elegant cursive for a long minute, a few words jumping out at him that he decided he couldn't digest here. "Thanks," he said finally, refolding the paper and pocketing it on the inside of his suit jacket. "I'll, um...I'll read it later."

Hodgins smiled in quiet understanding and nodded, perceiving the full weight of Booth's gratitude even though the agent conveyed it without words; he read it in the tortured depths of his eyes. Then he turned and strode back to his car, leaving Booth alone once again at the gravesite, with what he hoped was a little more light to move towards. ***

It was late when Booth arrived back at his appartment, having spent the entirety of the afternoon and evening at his office squeezing every possible drop of potential out of Brodsky's case files. Still, though he couldn't imagine how, he'd come up empty-handed. He hated the idea of coming home and trying to get a few hours' shut-eye and having it be invaded my dreams again even more than he hated the idea of coming home and trying to get a few hours' shut-eye and letting Brodsky walk free for another night, but he could only stay at J. Edgar Hoover so long, and, at two-fifteen in the morning, he was sure he wasn't going to be making any more headway tonight. Tomorrow, he promised himself, he would find a way to pinpoint the sniper's whereabouts. Bones had once told him that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome, so he would have to alter his tactics somehow. For all he knew Brodsky could be halfway to New Guinea by now and Booth would have no idea... He had to admit the way things were going he had half a mind to just jump in his car and start driving around the city in search of the man, craning his head out of the sunroof of of his black FBI suburban and screaming Jacob Brodsky's name. He didn't care who else heard, as long as Brodsky did. If that wasn't the definition of insanity, though, he didn't know what was. It had about as much of a chance at success as rechecking mountains of case files for the thousandth time did, but at this point he simply didn't know what else to do.

As Booth separated his housekey from the tangle on his key ring, he was startled to find it twisted with almost no resistance when he jammed it into the door. Immediately, warning bells went off in his head. The door had been unlocked. Had he remembered to lock it when he'd left for the pool hall the night before? He had no way of being sure.

Instinctively, Booth's hand went to his hip, and, very slowly, he pushed the door in, moving forward with the practiced, guarded step of someone entering a mine field. The appartment was dark, but he didn't have to search long; almost immediately he noted a figure seated at his kitchen table, and the gun came out. After a brief appraisal he deduced that the silohuette was female, but he'd been in the business long enough to not be so naive as to lower his weapon based upon this premise alone. Her face was shadowed, her body backlit by the window facing the street behind her. Moving coolly but efficiently, Booth took one hand from his firearm to reach for the light switch on the wall beside him. Finding it, he washed the appartment in a stark, yellow-white light that caused large red blotches to bloom across his vision temporarily. He waited for his eyes to adjust. When they did, the gun dropped to side. "What the hell?"


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10: P.S. I Love You**

"Hannah?" Booth felt his world do a cartwheel without him and his features contort accordingly, baffled as he looked upon her sitting at his kitchen table. He almost didn't trust his eyes, after days of hardly getting any sleep and processing buckets of emotional stress that had obviously shocked his system, to accurately convey what was happening in front of him. But he heard the scrape of the chair against the floor and the muted pads of her footfalls as she rose from the table and moved toward him, so characteristically if his memory served him correctly, on bare feet.

A broad, genuine beam unravelled across her features as she approached. "Seeley," she greeted, reaching him and planting what might have been a platonic kiss on the side of his mouth. Her blue eyes floated down to the gun in his hand and then roved back up to his face with a flirtatious glimmer. "Nervous?" Then her hand went to the side of his face. "God, when was the last time you shaved?" She demanded, palm massaging his jaw-line, eyes dancing in well-meaning jest. Then, "I like it; it looks very…roguish."

Eyes still fixed, unblinking, on Hannah, Booth kicked the door closed behind him, stance and expression perfectly stagnant, jaw half-agape. When he spoke his voice came out feeble and half an octave higher than it normally would. "H-how'd you get in here?" He wanted to know, though it was perhaps the least pressing on the list of things he wanted to ask.

Tossing a cascade of blond hair over one shoulder, Hannah breathed a peal of laughter that sounded like wind chimes. "That fake rock by your front door," she replied, appraising him smartly from under her lashes in that way that used to make Booth's insides turn to ash, "wouldn't fool anybody."

At this Booth felt a shadow pass over inside of him; he could remember Bones saying exactly the same thing to him once. Before today, he would have said it was one of those reminiscences he would rather forget, but now, in wake of the crushing finality of the funeral, he found he wanted to cling to every last image of Brennan, every last utterance by her that he could, because there would never be any more, which made even the most bland, inconsequential memories precious.

"What are you doing sitting in here in the dark?" Booth questioned then, shaking off the momentary barb.

Hannah took a step back, her expression betraying the fact that he wasn't nearly as happy to see her as she'd expected him to be right from the get-go. "I wanted to surprise you," she explained steadily, regrouping, "you know, like we used to do." She cocked her blond head to one side, sending ribbons of sunshine tumbling across her shoulders. "How are you?" The question seemed heartfelt, natural as breathing.

Booth finally blinked, breaking stance and swallowing hard. "Well," he answered slowly, cagily, "I guess…I guess you heard." Suddenly sense had fallen into place in his mind, reconciling the obscurity of this whole situation. Of course she'd heard. How could she not have? Why else would she be here?

But at Hannah's startled blink and quizzical brow-knit, Booth felt his stomach sink again. "No," she answered slowly, sounding concerned. "I've been in Bali for the past five months working on a poverty exposé; I haven't had any access to a TV or a phone for weeks…. What's going on?"

Booth stared at her, considering his answer for a long time. All at once he found he didn't feel like talking about it. "What are you doing here, Hannah?" He returned the question instead, doing his best to keep his voice gentle and unthreatening as he did so.

Another lengthy beat of silence while Hannah gauged her own response, her serene smile unfaltering all the while. Finally, she tipped her head the other way. "Come sit," she invited, nodding toward the table, and backing toward it away from Booth instead of turning from him.

For a minute he remained rooted where he stood, debating, the fingers on his free hand curling into a ruminative fist as he watched her go. He glanced to his left briefly, then to his right, as though looking for another way out before he finally seemed to decide there wasn't one and holstered his gun to follow her. She waited by the table for him to lower himself into one of the chairs with a wearied sigh, and then sat down in the one adjacent to him, pulling it close. _Perfect_, Booth thought before he could censor himself. _This is exactly what I need right now._

"I just wanted to talk," Hannah began benignly enough, her sparkling eyes wide open so Booth could see there was no hidden agenda behind them. "I arrived home Indonesia and I just…I don't know, I just thought of you."

Booth nodded, though his expression remained guarded. "Did you have good time?" He inquired in a rather lame attempt at civility.

A cryptic smile fluttered across Hannah's lips, her gaze drifting down to the table like a feather. "Yes," she answered heavily, as though there was more substance to the question than there seemed at first glance. Booth waited for her to elaborate, tell him some wild story about how she had to swan-dive into a jungle waterfall to escape a horde of randy tribesmen, or how she hotwired a car to ambush some important political figure for an interview using nothing but the underwire from her own bra – all the things about her he'd fallen in love with. When she spoke again, though, it was on a completely different tract; "But," she resumed tentatively after a pause, her voice halting, as though she couldn't decide what she had to say next was permissible, "it gave me a chance to do a lot of thinking." Her blue eyes found Booth's brown ones. "I started to wonder if…maybe…wandering from exotic country to exotic country…wasn't necessarily the greatest lifestyle choice for me anymore." She shrugged and raised her eyes to the ceiling them in a theatrical flourish. "Living like a nomad, braving life-and-death situations, staying in hostels, looking for adventure in every corner of the world you can think of…all of that seems very glamorous if you're a twenty-three-year-old fresh out of college, but for some reason it just doesn't appeal to me the way it used to. I realize I'm not exactly an eighty-nine-year-old snowbird yet – hell, it's even too early for a midlife crisis! But now when I go to these places and do these things it's not all…bohemian activist and rebel explorer; it's just like 'yeah, been there, done that'. I think I may be growing out of it. It's made me start to realize that maybe…maybe I am ready to settle down."

Realizing where this was going, Booth felt his eyes tighten and did his best not to react too abruptly. "Hannah…" he began, temperate, non-berating.

"Listen, Seeley." She leaned forward in her chair, suddenly intense. "When you proposed to me I remember thinking, 'being a wife just isn't for me; I'm not the marrying kind'. I felt like I still had too much to do with my life and too much to see to be tied down to another person. I'm independent and I always have been. I felt like I didn't need anyone else. But the truth is I _did _love you. I wasn't just placating you when I told you that. I meant it. With all my heart. And I meant it when I said I didn't think we were done; I just thought we were done for now."

"Hannah –"

"Maybe the time for 'for now' is up."

"Now really isn't the best time," Booth intercepted before she could go any further. As much as Hannah had hurt him, as angry as he'd been with her, he still didn't want her to embarrass herself now by putting her emotions on the line like that, especially when he knew there was no chance of reciprocation.

Recoiling a bit, Hannah regarded his expression as though she were already well-acquainted with the driving force behind his rejection – a familiar enemy. "Is this about Temperance?" She queried shrewdly, though the resignedness of her tone clearly suggested it was less a question than a confirmation; she'd expected as much. To her credit, though, there wasn't an ounce of bitterness in her voice when she asked the second part; it was merely a straight-forward, unabashed curiosity, almost as if she even could have been happy for him; "Did something happen with you two?"

Booth sighed heavily. As a person, he loved and admired Hannah. There was a time when he may have fantasized about her death in some pretty nasty ways, but she had never wished him anything but happiness, and good tidings. Part of the reason she had refused to marry him was because she was afraid he wouldn't be able to hold onto her, and she didn't want to be the one to hurt him that way. During their relationship she'd even gone so far as to befriend Bones, even bond closely with her, all for the sake of his happiness. But she had no idea how shattering her last question was for him, how crippled he had been by the loss of his partner.

"Bones is dead, Hannah." Though he said them quietly, the words sounded like a gunshot as they exploded from his lips, scorching him on the way out and dropping an anvil of silence between them while cold shock nestled in close to Hannah. "We just had the funeral this morning." He saw the gaping wound open in her face, watched as her eyes widened so white was visible all the way around the irises and her jaw dropped, hanging open for a minute before any sound could come out. When it did, it was thin and willowy, barely above a whisper.

"Oh, Seeley…."

"She was shot," Booth ploughed on before she could say a stinging word of consolation, the fact occurring to him that this was the first time he'd had to relay the story directly to anyone who had no knowledge of it yet. He thought of Bones quoting Einstein: _For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction_. The effect for him was almost a cathartic one; talking about it unexpectedly opened a channel for feelings about the event he hadn't even been conscious of before now. Suddenly his voice was hoarse and cracked, his throat painfully constricted as he looked down on the table and opened his hands in front of him in a desperately illustrative gesture. "Some…_coward,_" – he almost spat the word – "…shot her in the back." The next words were almost impossible for him to get out. "She died in my arms."

"Seeley," Hannah was shaking her head, unable to believe it. Her jaw was opening and closing as though at a loss for words. "I…I'm so…I don't know what to say." She collapsed back against the back support of the chair and stared unseeingly at Booth's shirt, raising one fist to her mouth as though she wanted to eat it. Then she looked up again, so suddenly it almost startled Booth. "She's dead?" She confirmed, as though he'd just informed her the sky was pink and the oceans had all dried up.

Booth looked at her, but said nothing in response, his eyes beseeching her not to make him repeat the story again, however brief he had made it the first time.

Hannah expelled a sharp breath, as though trying to dislodge the shock from her system. Then her eyes found Booth again and widened as though seeing him for the first time. "Are you okay?" The question tumbled from her lips before she could stop it, then she looked as though she wanted to shoot herself. "That's a stupid question!" She declared ardently, looking and sounding exasperated as she rolled her sapphire eyes skyward. "Of course you're not okay. Um…"

Booth decided to spare her the trouble of figuring out how to rephrase the question. "Everything," he answered slowly, his voice tremulous, "reminds me of her. Music...things people say, things she touched or places we went…I keep expecting to see her."

Hannah's features tightened in commiserative agony as she listened. Booth continued, candidness spilling out of him like puss from an infection. "I keep…imagining her face and I try not to, but it's like I'm afraid that if I don't every so often, I'm going to forget what she looked like. I keep remembering all the things she said, playing them over and over just in case, someday, I forget what her voice sounded like." Here he stopped for a breather and shook his head. "I've experienced loss before," he divulged reasonably. "I've seen pain and death on a scale most people can't even imagine. I've had to watch people die. People that I cared about, who I shared meals with and who showed me pictures of their family, but it's never been like this. I'm a mess, Hannah. I can't even go to sleep because I know the minute I close my eyes, I'm going to see her. I'm going to think she's still here. I keep dreaming of daffodils and dolphins and Jupiter…"

At this Hannah's features broke rank for a moment. "What?" She asked, looking thoroughly perplexed.

Booth shook his head. "Never mind." He couldn't expect Hannah to have any idea on just how deep a level he had known Bones – inside and out, better than her own parents. Better than anybody. "The point is," he went on more evenly, wearying of bearing his soul, "she was my responsibility. I should have been able to keep her safe, at all costs. When I took her into the field, I knew it would be dangerous, that there was a chance of her getting hurt, but I did it anyway. And I kept doing it. For six years I repeatedly put her in situations where her life was at risk, knowing full well that she had no training, no background in combat…."

Seeing where this was going, Hannah suddenly leaned forward again in her chair, her hand reaching forward to cover Booth's on the tabletop. "This isn't your fault, Seeley," she asserted, her oceanic eyes drilling into him seriously. "You know that, don't you?"

Booth gazed back at her, his eyes glazed, as though only half-seeing, half-somewhere else. "She saved Parker's life," he divulged, answering her question without directly answering it. "The only reason she was at Memorial Park that day was to warn me that Brodsky was going to try and target my son, and maybe me, too. She tried to call, to tell me to get Parker and get the hell out of there, but I hung up on her." As he said these words he felt a knot tighten in his throat again and his voice came out a bit choked. "I didn't want to hear it." All at once his dark eyes filled and he had to look down into his lap.

"Seeley," the potency of Hannah's voice forced him to look up at her. "You're a good man. I know that you did everything in your power to keep her out of harm's way. You'd die before you'd let anyone else around you get hurt, if you could help it. I may not have been there when it all happened, but I know you. And there isn't a doubt in my mind that there was nothing else you could have possibly done. And don't you doubt that for a second."

Booth listened quietly for a moment and then nodded once, to placate her, though in his mind he couldn't help but hear that voice again, uttering _you're wrong, _in the most treacherous of whispers. All his life he'd prided himself, built his very identity on the principle of being other peoples' buffers, of making sure they experienced not an ounce of suffering even if it came at the expense of sacrificing himself to do so. It had started with his brother, when their father used to come home drunk and threaten to beat the tar out of the both of them; it had been Booth who had taken the thrashings. Then in the army, he'd defended others, younger soldiers of lesser rank and experience who would have been the first to fall on the field of battle – sitting ducks – if he hadn't been there watching out for them. It was all he had to redeem himself, his very existence in this world. If he couldn't even do that for the one person besides his son whose existence had meant the most to him, then what purpose was he serving in this life? Who was he supposed to be?

"Okay," Hannah got to her feet suddenly, bringing him out of his reverie. "Well, I'm gonna go. Let you get some…rest. I'm sorry I dropped by at such a hard time." Snapping out of his trance, Booth looked up at her. She sounded like she meant it. He nodded again, once, but said nothing in response, too preoccupied with his last thought to be fully caught up with the moment yet. He stood up, too, and followed her to the door. She opened it herself, and was halfway into the hall when she pivoted suddenly on one heel, turning back to look at him with her chin hanging as though her tongue were weighted with words. "Seeley," she addressed him again hesitantly, her gaze and her voice faltering as she gauged the hurt behind his eyes, the instability, "you're not…going to do anything stupid, are you?"

All at once Booth's deep, dark eyes came into focus, finding her and boring in with the sharpness of an arrowhead. "What's that supposed to mean?" He demanded, quietly defensive.

Hannah thought hard for a long time before she answered. "It means Parker needs his father," she replied finally, and with tact.

Booth swallowed her response readily, though it burned his throat on the way down, landing in his stomach with a resounding simmer. "I've gotta get Brodsky, Hannah," he half-whispered fervently in response, his voice coming out more like a growl as suddenly he found himself looking at this as his only reason for living, his one goal to strive toward on the horizon. "I have to end this thing between us, for good."

Hannah's response leapt, spring-loaded from her perfectly outlined lips. "And then?" She questioned, eyes searching him zealously.

Booth's jaw tensed. He let out a slow breath through his nose, feeling as though he were breathing steam. He had no answer for that. Though he wasn't about to admit it, he hadn't yet permitted himself a glance that far into the future, because the truth was, past Brodsky's death, he didn't care. He didn't _want _to know what lay ahead for him. None of it mattered. He could see that telling her this was only going to make Hannah frantic, however, so he went another route; "I'll be fine, Hannah," he lied, the tone of his voice leaving no room for argument. "I'll deal, like I always have."

Hannah stared back at him for a long time, as though weighing the validity of this promise. Then, seeming to accept it as credible enough, she nodded. "Okay," she replied, her voice airy. "I'm in town for the long haul now, so call if you –"

"I won't need anything," Booth assured her, fed up with people telling him that.

At this Hannah looked a bit crestfallen. "I was going to say call if you just want someone to talk to," she amended tenderly. "I'm still your friend, Seeley. I'll be there for you if you need me to be."

He nodded tightly, wishing he could just close the door. "I appreciate that, Hannah," he said, in his best attempt at earnesty. "Right now I just need some time…on my own."

Hannah swallowed this and nodded her understanding, hitching her shoulder bag further up the bridge of her arm in preparation to go. "Alright. Good night, then. Take care of yourself, okay?"

Booth nodded, beginning to feel a bit like a bobble-head. "I will," he lied a second time, and then latched the door on her turning form. Once the wood was safely between them, he let his shoulders and head fall back against it in utter exhaustion, the wind rushing out of him as he wondered just how many more surprises he would be able to take this week. He stood there for a moment, eyes closed, mind blessedly blank, before he straightened and made his way slowly into his bedroom, where he collapsed back onto his mattress, fully dressed, unshaven and unshowered. He could feel his eyelids growing heavy, the discreet fingers of sleep pressing in around the edges of his consciousness. He started hearing things first, then seeing things. Then his eyes snapped open. _No_. He wasn't going back to sleep. No matter what, he wasn't going to let himself close his eyes again. Not tonight anyway. Not yet. He simply wasn't ready for it.

Weighing his options as to what he could do instead, Booth found one of his hands straying toward his breast pocket without even being aware of it. Pressing down, he felt and heard the crinkle of novel parchment under his fingertips, extracted a piece of off-white paper folded in threes. _I've seen this someplace before, _he thought, a bit dimwittedly, his brain apparently too spent to function properly anymore. And then it came back to him: Hodgins handing it to him after the funeral that morning. _"I think she'd want you to read it now," _he'd said. Suddenly he felt the muscles in his hands seize up, his jawline tighten as he stared at the inscription on the outermost fold, finding himself incapable of opening it further; _This book is dedicated to my partner and friend, Special Agent Seeley Booth_. He let his eyes rove over the words repeatedly for several minutes, etching them into his brain until they registered. Assuming Hodgins had been right in asserting that the letter had been meant for him, it occurred to him then that she must have meant these words to be the formal address, given there was no name printed at the top of the note on the other side, no preliminary _Dear Booth _or even _To Whom It May Concern_.

Forcing himself to blink and swallow and remember to breathe, Booth steeled himself for whatever emotions were about to assail his already battered and beaten-down system. Then, quickly and without giving himself time for thought, he unfolded the page and turned it over in his hands, mentally flinching a bit at the sight of Brennan's familiar cursive. The writing was graceful and uniform, despite the amount of stress she'd been under at the time of inscribing it, the message methodical and eloquent, her sophistication as writer coming out in the style. Immediately he recognized the rather different voice he'd come to know from reading her books – the fluent, articulate, unhurried voice she used to communicate things – more effectively, he'd say, than she did when speaking – on paper.

_I chose you for my final communication – if that's what this is to be_, she began, jumping right into the thick of it, _because you know me better than anyone else, inside and out, backwards and forwards. You know my strengths and my pitfalls, the best and the worst of me, and yet you stick by me, anyway. You're the one person who always has, and I don't think you truly realized how much that meant to me._

_ I don't have much time – Hodgins and I are going to try something here that will either blast us out of this tomb, or put an end to us for good, and if it's the latter, I didn't want to go with any regrets. I wanted you to know how, in the short time we've been working together, you made my life better in more ways than you can possibly imagine. There isn't a day that goes by that I'm not grateful to…chance, the Universe, whatever, that I met you, and I find I'm sorry now that I never told you as much. You deserved to hear it._

_ As much time as I spend as close to death as I do in my work, I never gave much thought to dying myself. I suppose I always just assumed that when I died, that would be it. My time would be up in this world for being a thinking, feeling, seeing entity. Matter would decay. I would disappear as seamlessly as if I'd never been here at all. Now, facing death head-on, I find I'm not so sure. I get the feeling there has to be something more. Not an end but a beginning. Another chance. I know you'll be the one to find us. I kept telling Hodgins you would, but whatever you find I want you to remember how it was when we were together; only the good times; the fun we had, and the secrets we shared. Know that you were the only one who knew them, and take comfort in the fact that we were lucky enough to have the years that we did. I know I do. They were the best of my life. Also know that, though I may have thought differently in the past, I will always be with you. Even when it's impossible. Even when you can't see me. You taught me love, and no one – not the Gravedigger or God or death – can ever take that away. For that I owe you my life, everything. Thank you. Oh, and one more thing: there's something I've been wanting to say to you for quite some time but never thought it permissible to articulate out loud because it would result in me losing you forever, and that was the last thing I wanted. Finding myself now with nothing more to lose, I think it would be the appropriate time, the _only _time, to tell you; I love you. _The places where she'd started to write _Brennan _and _Temperance _were scratched out. Below the final body of writing, printed instead simply in elegant, slanting script, was just the word: _Bones_.

Booth sighed heavily and let his head fall back against the pillow with his eyes closed, almost wishing he hadn't read it. The way he felt at the moment, it'd only seemed to make everything harder. It wasn't a whole lot more than he'd already known on some level or another, but it was enough. Before he knew what was happening, Booth was enveloped in a mist of sleep not unlike the enchantment of that of the poppy fields in _the Wizard of Oz_, emotional drainage, sleep deprivation, shock, all of it finally catching up with him with the potency of about three Exedrin PM's mixed with a litre of whisky. All at once, he found he could reject those voices in his head no longer...

_He knew where he was even before he knew what he was doing there. He would have recognized the alter of a Church, the mantle of the cross mounted on the wall overtop of it, even in his most bozarre and outlandish of nightmares. The sanctity of the place was palpable; if he were blind, he would have been able to discern the heady aroma of the insence, the waltzing light of a legion of candles. Even having just come into a kind of state of full awareness, he knew immediately that he'd been praying; he recognized the tranquil stillness in his chest, the idyllic emptiness of his mind, the kind of serenity he could only achieve by conversing with the Great I Am. _

_ Even though he wasn't looking at her, he knew Bones was in the pew beside him. He sensed her agitation, her uncomfortable energy as she shifted in her seat and glanced about her as though she expected lightning to come down and strike her at any minute. They were alone, the only two in an expansive plot of spiritual space._ _He remembered this day, and when she suddenly turned her head to look at him, coffee-coloured hair sweeping her shoulders and teal eyes timid, he found he knew what she was going to say even before the words rolled off her tongue. "I'm okay with you thanking God for saving me and Hodgins," she told him a bit haltingly, as though uncertain whether this was something he needed to know. That was Bones, though; if she didn't know whether she should say something she always said it anyway - when in doubt, put it out there._

_ Very slowly, he half-turned to look at her, speaking in a respectful hush out of the side of his mouth even though there was no one else in the Church; just being here was enough to make one reverent and sombre. "That's not what I thanked Him for," he whispered in reply, his tone suggesting she should have already realized this. At her quizical blink, he continued. "I thanked Him for saving...all of us." He squared gazes with her. "It was all of us. Every single one. You take one of us away, and you and Hodgins are in that hole forever. And I'm thankful for that."_

_ Brennan appraised him for a long moment, her features softening as she considered his words. Then she did that thing where she fixed him with a gaze he was supposed to interpret as the manifestation of a thousand emotions. "I knew you wouldn't give up," she murmured softly, a gratitude in her voice that melted Booth's heart. He gazed back at her evenly._

_ "I knew you wouldn't give up," he echoed, admiration reigning in his voice, his chocolat e eyes shining as he looked at her. There was a lingering stare, during which a thousand words passed between them without a single one being uttered aloud, and then Booth went back to gazing up at the alter, considering what a miracle it was that she was sitting there next to him. _Thank you, _he thought, humbly but ardently. _Thank you for saving her.

_As the dream reeled forward, the way it always did, her last words to him in the pew that day reiterated over and over as though on a loud speaker, more than just in his head. He could hear them, clear and lucid as though she were standing right next to him, whispering them in his ear; "I knew you woulnd't give up." "I knew you wouldn't give up." Then ones that were purely a manifestation of his dreams, that he hadn't heard, but which were still uttered in the timbre of her voice; "Don't give up."_

**Author's Note: Aha! Gotcha ;) You didn't honestly think I would make it be Brennan, did you? I'm not saying that's not what we were all hoping for, but that would have just been too corny...Stay tuned! Big plans for the next couple of chapters!**


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note: This chapter contains some scenes/lines that were taken directly from 6x22. This was meant as a direct parallel for the sake of the story, not an infringement. Also, I want to put another big thanks out there to all those wonderful reviewers! It's so exciting to check my e-mail after posting a chapter and find my inbox stocked with fresh review alerts. Really gets my creative juices flowing **** Anyway, here's Chapter 11….**

**P.S. Oh yeah, and I wrote this at 4:30 in the morning during a bout of insomnia, so hopefully it's still reflective of my best work ;)**

**Chapter 11: The Signs in the Silence**

When Booth arrived at his office the following morning he had a renewed sense of purpose in his stride, a definite pep in his gait that turned heads as he power-walked the ivory halls toward his own private workspace, his colleagues no doubt wondering what case he could possibly be working on that could be so important. His dream the night before, as well as the letter that was still folded neatly atop his bed next to his pillow – where he'd left it after falling asleep – had instilled in him a new kind of energy, a new philosophy to live by. Actually it was an old philosophy, just one that particular memory happened to remind him of: _Don't give up_. That was who he was, who he had once been. He wasn't a quitter, especially not when someone he cared about still had to be avenged. In all his life, he'd never once given up until the job was done. It was his duty not to. His duty to his job, to his country, to himself, and to Bones. None of this did anything to take the pain away. Not in the slightest, but it helped him find the momentum to move forward, gave him something to focus his aspirations on.

He was just rounding the final corner toward his office when Assistant Director Hacker intercepted him. "Whoa, Agent Booth," he chuckled, sucking back a bit when he nearly collided with his employee. Booth stopped in his tracks. "Where's the fire?" When Booth failed to provide a coherent answer, Hacker went on. "I didn't expect to see you back at work for at least a few more days." He tilted his dark head suddenly, appraising Booth as a father might appraise a child with a scraped knee. "How're you doin'?" He sighed soberly. "You doin' okay?"

Booth held up a fistful of case files, pasting levity on his features as he did so. "I'm doin' just fine, sir," he replied readily, giving his boss no time to detect even a hint of heartache. "Just looking to get some traction on the Brodsky case. This guy is mine, come hell or high water." He tried to make it sound like casual cockiness as he said it, though of course Hacker had no idea about the very real boil of blood he felt in his veins as he did so. He moved to shoulder past the Assistant Director but Hacker took a step back and one to one side so he was blockading Booth's path once more.

"Okay," he conceded hastily, jumping tracks. He jerked a thumb in the direction of Booth's office. "I just thought I should let you know before you get in there that there's a woman waiting for you in your office."

Booth's new-found vivacity floundered momentarily, derailed, and he tried not to let it show on his face as he felt an iron fist tighten suddenly around his stomach. It was a sensation not unlike that of being socked in the gut. "Perfect," he muttered sardonically to himself, rearranging his features only when he caught sight of the inquisitive look on Hacker's. "I'll take care of it right away, sir," he promised in a much more cavalier tone. "Thanks for letting me know." The last thing he felt up to doing at the moment was divulging the rather disturbing details of the night before to his superior.

"I'd hustle if I were you," Hacker called after him as Booth sidestepped him and continued on toward his office. "She's been there a while and she doesn't look too good…."

Booth didn't hear the last part of his boss' warning as he headed for his door. Given that it was made of glass and in full few of the rest of the complex, he was able to see his gentlewoman-caller even before he was over the threshold, and it wasn't who he'd been expecting. Breaking stride for the second time in the last minute-and-a-half, he drew to a halt just yards short of his office door, gazing through the glass with an unexpected grimace of concern. Pacing the length of his office, chin bowed to her chest, features twitchy and hands tucked tightly under her arms, Booth discerned the statuesque, dark-haired figure of Angela. She was wearing a knee-length trench coat, as though body warmth was hard to come by in the eighty-degree weather outside, and her black eyes were shining and restless as they darted about the small room around her, the voluptuous mouth underneath trembling ever so slightly. She was blinking a lot, as though working to stem a flow of waterworks that wasn't welcome at the moment. When she saw him, her tightly-wound features unravelled into a too-bright smile and she emancipated one of her hands to fire a brief wave, though her elbow remained tucked firmly against her side.

Booth moved forward into the office, avoiding her gaze, his step more guarded than it had been a moment ago. "Hey," he greeted a bit bracingly, closing the door behind him so their conversation – whatever it was to be – would remain private.

"Hi," the return came out on a rush of air as Angela closed the distance between them with an eagerness that almost startled Booth. Wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, she embraced him out of nothing more or less, Booth discerned, than personal necessity, disarming him as she held onto him for a long moment as though he were a lifeline. While she hugged him she expelled a tight, pained breath that sounded as though she'd been holding it for a long time while she was waiting for him, his arrival relieving her of the pressure.

Booth's voice softened as he hugged her back. "Whoa, hey, okay…it's okay." He traced the length of her shoulder blade soothingly with one palm for a moment before he pulled back, holding her at arm's length by the biceps so he could look her in the face. "Is everything alright?"

Already Angela was shaking her head, her temples jerking from side to side in a rapid, quippy motion that might merely have been a vibration of the nerves. "N-not-n-no, not so much," she stammered at once, drawing in a deep, tremulous breath. It was obviously taking all her energy just to keep her cool, and Booth couldn't deny she wasn't doing a very good job of it.

Steeling himself, he removed his hands from her arms and buried them in his pockets, forcing himself to hold her gaze. "What's wrong?" He asked, even though he was pretty sure he already knew, and he was doubly certain he didn't want to hear about it.

Angela exhaled loud and fast, the walls coming down. "I'm a mess, Booth," she confessed, her voice climbing higher as a knot tightened in her throat, dark eyes narrowing as tears sprang into them. For the first time Booth noticed the dark circles underscoring her bottom lashes, the agedness in her normally youthful and vibrant face. All at once he was able to read suffering where spirit had once been, and he felt another part inside of him break for her. Again, he tried not to let himself think about the night before, remembering him saying exactly the same thing to Hannah. He waited patiently instead for her to go on. "I haven't been able to think about anything besides Brennan for three days. I cry at the drop of a hat. I can't eat, I can't paint…I can't even take care of my own son," she admitted this as though it were the most incriminating of sins, bowing her head and dropping her gaze to the floor as she forced herself to plough on, her voice getting less stable by the minute. "Hodgins is at home with him now – he took the day off work. I'm trying," she blinked hard and looked at the ceiling, "so hard to remember the good times, you know? What her laugh sounded like and her lame attempts at telling jokes…but every time I try, every time I close my eyes all I can see is her lying there…" Angela's voice broke and she shook her head, fighting back more flash images that were threatening to tear her apart.

Booth let himself default to that hardened stoicism that had helped him get down to business so much over the last few days, denying himself any and all distractions, banishing them to the regions of his subconscious. "Why are you coming to me about this, Angela?" He wanted to know, considering all the people she could have connected with on a much more personal level; her husband, for instance, or Cam.

Angela's face rose and she levelled him with a watery, unsettled shunt of a gaze. "Because I thought you of all people would understand," she answered after a long moment, her choked voice barely above a whisper, and heartrendingly expectant. Her eyes tightened as she looked at him, as though they were searching for a part of his soul he was keeping carefully hidden, locked behind closed doors and under a rock where it would be safe from any more damage. "We were so close. I always thought that if something happened to one of us (God forbid) the other would be able to feel their presence with them as they carried on, like a loving, comforting energy following them around as they worked through the grief, something to let their best friend know that they were okay…." Angela paused and shook her head again slowly. "But I don't feel anything, Booth." Tears streamed over her beautifully-defined cheekbones as she said this, _admitted it_, more like, as though it were somehow her fault. "Not a warmth or a whisper or a signal…nothing. It's just…coldness and pain. Do _you _feel anything?" Her mocha eyes drilled into Booth suddenly with a desperation that almost made him fess up, but he merely stared back at her evenly for a lengthy minute, holding his poker face. When he'd finally decided on what he was going to say, he squared her with a sympathetic but otherwise unfeeling gaze, forcing himself to look directly into her tear-filled, almond-shaped eyes.

"Look, Angela, maybe you just need to talk to someone," he diffused the question tactfully, reluctant to divulge the truth at this moment. The truth was he knew exactly how she felt, but this fact was far too hard for him to even think about right now, let alone talk about.

Angela drew back a bit, stung. "I am talking to someone," she contested meekly, giving Booth a brief once-over as though she didn't even know him.

"No," Booth modified. "Someone professional. Someone who can help." Turning back around, Booth retraced his steps to the door and leaned his head out into the hallway. "Sweets!" He boomed down the corridor, his voice echoing in the bureaucratic halls. He waited half a beat. No movement from the shrink's office. "Sweets!"

Behind him, Angela started to protest, her composure hardening a bit with the indignation. "No, Booth, I don't need –"

"What, in Heaven's name is going through that cute li'l noggin of yours, cheri?" The ample form Caroline Julian materialized in the doorway instead of Sweets, causing Booth to start and jump back a pace. She pinned him with a reproachful look that would have shamed a bounty hunter. "You wanna tell me what it is you think you're doin' here? Hollerin' through the halls like it's your own personal ump field?"

Booth blinked once, working to regather himself before he answered. "I was looking for Sweets," he informed her evenly, even employing a bit of a tone as he did so. "Do you have any idea where he is?"

At this Caroline suddenly looked affronted, as though it were dense of him even to bother asking. "Dr. Sweets," she illuminated, belting the shrink's name as though it should have been obvious, "took a leave of absence, and you should too! Waltzing into work like nothing's happened! Cheri, you gotta be destroyed inside!"

It occurred to Booth that Sweets' absence might explain the lack of insight they'd had on Brodsky's next plausible move since Brennan's death.

"I'm fine, Caroline." The words snapped forth from Booth's lips with a steady resolve that silenced her immediately, though her expression was far from convinced. "I've got a job to do. There's a killer wandering the streets out there and he has to be caught." Booth was vaguely aware of the fact that he was beginning to sound like a broken record. His next words came out slow, deliberate. "I have to take him down."

Caroline bristled. "You do what you gotta do, Booth," she assented after a moment. "Just make sure you're takin' care of yourself in the process and mind we don't end up with two funerals on our hands instead of one, capiche?" She started to turn away, waving a flippant hand over her shoulder as she went. "That would be damn expensive. I'll be back to check on you later."

"Fine!" Booth called after her somewhat begrudgingly as he closed the door again, deciding acquiescence was always an easier route than trying to argue with a Federal Prosecutor, not that that meant he had to sound happy about it. Turning back to Angela, he heaved a heavy sigh and rubbed a hand down the length of his face, already exhausted. "Angela," he began wearily, too spent to try to sound apologetic, "I've got a lot of work to do; do you think we could discuss this later?"

She looked at him, eyes rounding woundedly, but nodded. "Sure," she answered in a thin voice that was almost inaudible, genuinely understanding even though he hadn't been. She started toward the door, then stopped and turned, drawing in a breath of preparation and holding it for a moment as though gauging the acceptability of what she had to say next before she said it. "It's just…this whole Brodsky thing…it's sort of…put me on edge. I'm feeling very weird, like I want to do something, like Brennan's death changed me somehow and it's…kind of scary…."

"Agent Booth!" Assistant Director Hacker reappeared in the doorway where Caroline had been standing mere moments before, moving so fast Booth hadn't even seen him approach before he pushed open the glass door and leaned his head in just far enough for a message. Booth whirled around to look at him. Was he _ever _going to get any peace around here? "We've got a hit on Brodsky."

All at once every thought that had been cycloning around in Booth's head moments before was wiped clean, like they were the fancy dinnerware atop the dining room table and Brodsky's case was the tablecloth that had been ripped out from underneath them, shattering their very foundation. He tossed the armful of case files onto his desk and moved closer to Hacker, eagerness radiating from his features as he turned his back on Angela, almost completely forgetting her presence. "Where?" Was the only thing he wanted to know. He could feel his pulse accelerating in his chest, a keyed-up quiver starting deep within the core of his bones. This was what he had been waiting for. Finally the green light.

"Port of Wilmington," Hacker replied readily, speaking in hasty, clipped tones in an effort to convey the message as quickly as possible. "Apparently he works on a produce ship there, the Persephone."

Booth was moving before the last word had even finished discharging from Hacker's lips. Feeling as though his insides had been wound so tightly as to be spring-loaded, he turned and bolted for the storage cupboard in his own office, wrenching open the door with unwarranted force and extracting a fifty-inch-long black firearms case. Unzipping it lengthwise with nimbly flying fingers, Booth unveiled the gun and did a quick double-check of the ammunition, testing the bolt action in a motion so fast it might have gone unnoticed to someone with an untrained eye. Angela watched from the corner, wide-eyed and barely breathing, feeling her heart begin to crawl up into her throat as Booth readied what she could only assume was his sniper rifle.

"Who called it in?" Booth queried hurriedly as he tucked the rifle back into its case and zipped it up, satisfied.

Hacker shrugged. "No idea," he replied unhelpfully as Booth shouldered the weapon and made for the door. "Report was anonymous. Which also means," he added in a suddenly ardent tone, pivoting on one heel to follow Booth into the hallway, "this could just as easily be a set-up." There was a rather elementary warning underscoring Hacker's words that made Booth scoff.

"I've served in the 101st Airborne Division, the 75th Ranger Regiment _and _the U.S. Army Special Forces," he reminded Hacker a bit superciliously, "in three different war zones, no less. You think I haven't thought of that?"

Hacker worked to curb an eye-roll as he half-ran, half-jogged to keep up with Booth's pace. "Yeah, I know you're a big shot combat vet," he acknowledged hastily, "but even Bronze Star earners aren't immune to an ambush. Remember, Seeley, is only takes one bullet –"

"Yes, sir," Booth practically snarled over one shoulder in response. He was nearly at the doors now. "I get it." _A lot more than you realize._

"Just…_be careful_!" Hacker halted, hitting the end of his track as Booth continued on out the doors into the parking lot. "Call if you need back up!" He roared after him, cupping both hands around his mouth as he watched Booth sprint across the tarmac toward the black suburban. "And watch your back!" Lowering his hands, Hacker placed them in his pockets with a resigned sigh, shaking his head disconcertedly as he watched Booth climb into the driver's side without so much as a backward glance of acknowledgement. A moment later the car purred to life and proceeded out of the parking lot in a squeal of burning rubber and blaring of sirens, red and blue lights revolving behind the tinted windshield.

As he drove Booth felt the familiar surge of adrenaline singing through his system, worked to stay it. As a soldier and a trained law enforcement agent for the FBI, he had enough experience in high-risk, high-tension situations to know the importance of keeping one's cool. He'd had techniques engrained in him concerning how to effectively quiet his nerves, so he could think clearly, so he could be sharper of wit than his opponent. In these kinds of man-to-man combat situations, clear-headedness was key. He knew that and yet he found himself having more trouble with it than he was accustomed to. This time, for some reason, for the first time in his entire service career as far as he could remember, he thought he might lose. It was only just occurring to him that in this particular face-off, there was a fifty-fifty chance of him coming out of it alive. He knew what Brodsky was capable of, and he knew what _he _was capable of, and he knew neither of them was going to leave that shipyard until the other was dead. None of this, however, had anything to do with what disturbed him the most about the prospect. The most unsettling sensation of all descended on him only when it struck him out of the blue: the realization that he didn't care. He was going to do his best. He wanted Brodsky dead with every fibre of his being, but with a start it occurred to him now that if he were to fail, if Brodsky was the one who came out on top and he wound up swallowed up somewhere in the scope of eternity, of oblivion, it wouldn't really matter all that much. He would be grateful for the release.

Taking a corner so sharp the car reared sideways on two wheels, Booth left this thought behind with the momentum of the turn, dismissing it on the grounds that he had to remain clear-headed. He had to do everything in his power to avoid distraction right now.

Blazing into the parking lot of the shipyard, he stomped on the brakes, locking the tires so the vehicle skidded to a stop. Reaching for his rifle case, he killed the ignition, silencing the lights and the sirens before he leapt from the car. He extracted his badge from the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket while simultaneously making a mad dash for the service entrance. There was an admissions officer stationed in an open-air booth by the chain-link gate under a sign that read in no-nonsense, maroon block print: _Port of Wilmington_. Booth flashed him his seal. "Which way to the Persephone?" He demanded, not in the least bit out of breath despite the sprint. His heart and lungs felt as though they could go for miles.

The officer regarded him a big cagily. "Why?" He wanted to know, mocha brow furrowing disconcertedly as he eyed the weapon case slung over Booth's right shoulder.

"You've got a wanted murderer on the premises," Booth informed him hurriedly, his tone immediately dismissing the prospect of any more questions. "Unless you want to find yourself handcuffed to an interrogation table, you're gonna point me in his direction within the next two seconds."

The man blinked and visibly swallowed whatever else he'd had coalescing on his tongue to say. "Far North-East port," he disclosed, indicating with an outstretched arm and index finger.

Booth nodded once tightly. "Thank you." He then removed the case strap from his shoulder and lowered the four-foot weapon to the pavement, where he knelt next to it and unzipped the nylon sleeve to extract the fifteen-pound, forty-eight-inch PSG1 he'd been issued when he first started working in law enforcement. He'd rarely had to break it out, probably had only done so on one or two occasions in the past, and predominantly on this case when he did. It was said to be one of the world's most accurate semi-automatic sniper rifles. Whether that was going to be any use to him now, he couldn't be certain. He made sure the cartridge was installed and the trigger unit properly adjusted before he erected the weapon and loped off into the labyrinth of transport-truck-sized cargo crates, heading as directly as he could in a North-Easterly direction. While he ran he hooked up and inserted the earpiece that attached to the body of the semi-automatic, connecting to his cell signal in case Hacker called.

He navigated the shipping crates lithely, ignoring the several-tonne boxes that were snaking from crane supports overhead, descending in perfect alignments upon their cousins. Every so often he poised the gun when he rounded a corner in time to see a couple of port officials spot him and scurry out of his way, hands in the air with looks of avid perturbation evident on their features as they did so. Each time Booth couldn't help but experience a pang of apology for the poor guys; they'd probably never stared down the barrel of a gun in their entire lives, and now he wise jumping out of the hedgerows, so to speak, probably causing them to soil themselves as they bolted for the exits. Within minutes, he had the entire place cleared out. Everyone, except, he hoped, for Brodsky. ***

Jacob Brodsky was taking inventory in the cargo hold of the Persephone when he happened to glance out one of the portholes to an eerily vacant shipping yard. Squinting, he studied the empty tracts and pathways between the crates, a feeling of unease stealing into his chest as he realized all at once that there wasn't a soul to be found in the entire port, and he could see most of it, from this elevation. Where had everybody gone? As he stared, searching, he found he couldn't quell the distinct sensation that it had something to do with him, and had no time to write this off as sheer paranoia before he spotted Seeley Booth, fully uniformed in FBI-drone garb, crab-walking the paths around the storage crates with a PSG1 locked and loaded against his eye. There was someone else, too. A woman. Brodsky didn't grant her more than a fleeting glance.

Swearing profanely under his breath, Brodsky overturned a mattress amongst the littering of storage debris to reveal his own MSG90, which he took up easily in one hand – it was considerably light and stronger than Booth's police-issued weapon – and carried out on deck before descending down into the shipping yard to meet his opponent. ***

Booth glided over the ground like a swiftlet, footsteps muted and upper body moving in a steady, horizontal contour as though the natural up-and-down rhythm of human walking didn't exist for him. He kept both eyes open, as all snipers were trained to do, peeled for Brodsky in both the lens of the rifle's telescope and the Tetris-like path in front of him. He moved forward and sideways, but never turned around, body aimed in one consistent direction as he navigated the maze of cargo. It was almost like a sick, life-size version of Pacman. Memories rushed his brain, flashbacks to his time in Somalia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, even the Gulf War as he slipped easily back into a frame of body and mind that he hadn't used in years, but had been engrained into him to such a degree as to me almost as natural to him as walking, as breathing. All he had to do was yield to his instincts. _Just like riding a bike, _he thought grimly, before he could stop himself, then ordered himself to focus.

Quashing the bass thunder of his heart against his inner ears, he listened for footsteps, however subtle, as he inched toward the next corner. Rounding it, he heard a flurry of them, caught the blur of a trench coat just as he came in sight of his next trajectory. _There's someone else in here_, he thought a bit superfluously, deciding it must be one of the stragglers from the group of port officials he'd already panicked into fleeing, and making a mental note to watch out for more as he continued on.

That's when a bullet ricocheted off the wall of the cargo crate he had his back against with the kind of metallic-sounding shrill that can only be attributed to gunfire, inches from his head. Spinning around, Booth directed his rifle back in the direction he had come, dismayed to find it vacated before he'd turned around. He had no idea which way Brodsky had went, but he steeled himself for some swaggering verbal foreplay none the less. "Brodsky!" He called into the network abyss at the top of his lungs, working to keep the timbre of his voice sound. "You missed!"

There was barely a beat before the booming baritone of his ex-army colleague echoed back to him, resonating off the steel shipping containers in a way that made Booth think of a voice coming from beyond the grave; "Warning shot!" Brodsky amended, though whether he was merely reserving dignity or really had aimed to distract Booth couldn't be certain. His instincts impelled him toward the latter, as in his entire career Booth had known him to miss only once, and that was when he had been aiming for his son.

In that moment a rather disturbing thought occurred to Booth; what if he were to simply drop his weapon? Come head-to-head with Brodsky unarmed, with his hands in the air and just let it all end however it happened to unfold? There would be no more pain, no more guilt or worrying. Just…nothingness. It would be so easy. He would never have to feel anything again…. _Where did that come from? _He mentally slapped himself upside the head. What had he only just decided that morning? That he wasn't a quitter. He had to finish what he'd started. He owed that much to Bones, at the very least. Then he could default to self-destruct if he wanted to. Right now, though, he could hear only her voice in his dream, driving out all thoughts of throwing in the towel; _I knew you wouldn't give up. Don't give up._ Booth regrouped.

"Warning shot," He parroted sardonically, adjusting the zoom on the eyepiece of his weapon. "That's awfully courteous of you, Jake." He still had no visual on Brodsky, but he could hear him as clearly as though he were standing right next to him.

"Maybe I'm in a generous mood today," the sniper quipped back. Then, on the same wavelength, "I'm going to give you one chance, Seeley. One chance to walk out of here with your life. You don't want that sweet little boy of yours to grow up fatherless, do you? Do what your partner was too stupid to do, and walk away."

"Bones wasn't stupid," Booth muttered in response, half to himself but with the distinct feeling Brodsky was close enough to hear him. He was still searching the viewfinder on his telescope, pointing the rifle barrel in alternating directions clockwise as he shifted forward between the two containers. "She had ten times the intelligence you could ever hope for, which was probably how she knew you wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell in the end." He was fighting back emotion, working to keep the distraction in check, but he had to keep talking, hold Brodsky's attention while he waited for him to make a mistake and give away his position. "We were a good team. Tight. She knew I wouldn't give up until you were taken down, not after what you did to her."

There was a beat of pregnant silence during which Booth worried briefly that he'd lost his target again. Then he heard Jacob Brodsky's answer, perilously close. "Collateral damage in the pursuit of a greater good," he justified coolly, and in that moment, Booth's sharply-tuned ears caught the subtle yet distinct metallic clink of a shoelace on steel.

"A greater good," Booth reiterated, steeling himself for the cornerstone movement, "would be a world without bastards like you in it." He whirled around so fast Brodsky had no time to step back before he was staring down the barrel of Booth's gun from his elevated position atop the adjacent shipping crate. Instinct taking hold, he aimed his own rifle in a hair-trigger motion but Booth was faster. The bullet that exploded between them came from his gun and Brodsky disappeared over the opposite side of the crate, rifle taking a flight of its own in another direction.

Unwilling to waste any time waiting for an outcome, Booth sprinted through the maze around the side of the massive cargo container to the spot where he knew his opponent had landed. He hadn't aimed to kill. Why hadn't he aimed to kill? When he rounded the other side he found Brodsky on his back in the dirt, weapon far out of reach. "Aw," Brodsky groaned, rolling onto his side and cradling a badly winged hand, the hand he'd been holding the MSG90 in. "Damn it, Booth."

"Get up," Booth ordered, his voice low and dangerous as he approached the spot where the sniper lay, his gun poised and ready on him.

Brodsky looked up at him for a moment through eyes that were glazed with pain, a gaze radiating outright resentment. "You never were an easy one to sneak up on, I'll give you that," Brodsky granted, bitterness dripping caustically from his tone.

Booth held the gun on him despite the fact he was now standing directly over him. "Snipers always go for the higher ground," he elucidated smartly. "You should have known better than to try to pull that one off on me." He nudged Brodsky in the calf none too gently with the toe of one shoe. "Come on," he prompted. "On your feet."

Scorching Booth with a look of death, Brodsky did as he was told, staggering awkwardly back up into a standing position, hands in the air, one of them bleeding profusely. He was panting heavily, Booth noted, having had the wind knocked out of him as he glared back at him, his upper body swaying a bit drunkenly as though he were experiencing some lightheadedness. "What are you planning to do with me now, Booth?" He challenged, hazel eyes narrowed against the sting of the bullet that had grated his hand, a shallow graze scoring the length of his jaw line from the fall. "You going to bring me in?"

Booth jerked his chin in a tight one headshake, chocolate eyes unblinking as they held Brodsky in a pin in accordance with the threat from his weapon. "Not a chance in hell," he replied, that same treacherous tremulousness in his quiet voice. "You wanted this between you and me so here it is; I'm finishing you off man-to-man."

At this a rumbling laugh issued forth from Brodsky's chest like an earthquake, his murky eyes hardening scathingly. "What are you going to do?" He guffawed dramatically, as though the very implication was laughable. "You going to shoot me?" He appraised Booth from under a cynical gaze, looking relatively unperturbed, but still took a step back from the agent, lengthening the distance between them ever so subtly, hands still raised non-threateningly where Booth could see them. "Come on," he beseeched in a less than vulnerable manner, "you and I both know prison is a much better punishment than annihilation. You never could go for the kill, Seeley. Not if there was any other way."

Booth held the gun on him resolutely, his mental position immovable as he slithered forward to parallel Brodsky's motion. "That was before you had my partner murdered," he modified darkly, brown eyes unblinking as he readied himself.

Brodsky regarded him somewhat condescendingly. "I warned you to back off," he reminded the agent, a wickedness stealing into his voice that made the fine hairs on the back of Booth's neck stand on end. "You knew what would happen if you stayed on my case and you did it anyway. You're the one who killed her, Booth, not me. This murder is on _your _head. What kind of U.S. ranger – what kind of _man _– are you that you couldn't even protect your own partner?" All at once something shifted behind Brodsky's eyes, a resignation that Booth could have sworn he read as triumph, though that made absolutely no sense at first. A malicious sneer touched upon his features, making him look like a demon in the crosshairs of Booth's lens, and for the briefest of moments the agent felt his conviction falter. "But if that's how you really feel," the sniper shrugged below raised hands as though the outcome couldn't have made less of a difference to him, "do it then." Though his features remained absolutely deadpan, inwardly Booth felt himself blink in surprise. Brodsky continued in a malevolent snarl. "Go ahead. See what it feels like, the thrill of killing in cold blood."

Booth worked diligently to stay his temper. "It isn't cold blood," he contested quietly. "It's blood that you owe me, Jake. More than you could ever repay."

"Then do it," Brodsky repeated through clenched teeth, craning his chin forward enticingly as though aroused by Booth's argument. "You know you want to. I'm the one responsible, like you said. Blow me into next week."

With a surge of frustration, Booth suddenly realized what Brodsky was trying to do. It wasn't reverse psychology or some twisted attempt to intimidate him into letting Brodsky live; he genuinely _was _trying to get him to let the final blow fall, to make him become like him: a killing machine. A monster. Someone Booth had diligently vowed never to let himself be ever since he left the military. If he couldn't defeat Booth, then he was going to ruin him permanently. He would have to live with the knowledge that he'd shot an unarmed man, without law enforcement present or a verdict from a jury, the same way Brodsky had done to so many others he had deemed unfit for this world. If he could make him like him, he won, too. Whether Booth spared his life now and turned him in to the police, or ended it all right here, there would no longer be any redemption. No matter what he chose, for Booth it was a lose-lose situation.

Brodsky's tactic backfired; considering this, Booth's brain skipped two steps ahead of his opponent's and he decided that, if he was condemned to getting the short end of the deal either way, he might as well make it worth his while.

"Tell me how it felt, Booth," Brodsky goaded, egging him on under the impression that his stoicism was to be taken for cowardice, "feeling her heart stop, watching the life leave her eyes…." Those were the last words Jacob Brodsky ever spoke.

All too suddenly, a flash sequence of images bombarded Booth's brain like a film reel montage on fast forward, making temporal leaps that almost left even him behind. Memories danced behind his eyes, torturously close, just beyond his reach. He heard voices as though they were playing out right there in front of him; fights and jests and laughter and arguments. He heard Brennan's voice, so fresh, so real, as though she'd never gone anywhere, and other voices, too;

_"_Don't _call me Bones."_

_ "I can be a duck!"_

_ "You take a squint into the field, she's your responsibility."_

_ "You're a cold fish!" "You're a superstitious moron!" "Get a soul!" "Grow a brain!"_

_ "Sometimes I think you're really very nice."_

_ "I guess I'm just one of those people who wasn't meant to be in a family." "You know, Bones, there's more than one kind of family."_

_ "Are you going to betray me?" "No."_

_ "That's not surprising since you clearly don't have any real concern for me!" "I took a bullet for you!" "Once! That only goes so far…would you like a towel?"_

_ "Striking Agent Booth indicated the depth of your feelings for him. It was a very passionate act." "You hear that, Bones? Passion!" "Yes! Passion! Because anger is a passion! Anger at being manipulated!"_

_ "I'm standing right next to you, Booth, like always. Like I always will."_

_ "I'd die for you. I'd kill for you."_

_ "Booth don't leave me." "I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here, okay? Right where I've always been."_

Booth's finger tightened on the trigger. A shot rang out, and for the briefest of moments Booth thought it had discharged from his firearm, but it wasn't the razor whine of a sniper rifle splitting the air; instead it sounded more like the thunderous blast from a handgun. Brodsky's eyes widened and emptied, resigned, finally, to death. His knees bucked, hit the dirt of the pathway, and then he fell forward, face-first instead of back, as he should have if Booth had shot him in the chest. Following his motion down to the ground, Booth noted the bullet hole between the sniper's shoulder blades, and looked up, lowering his own unfired weapon as his eyes fell upon the last person he would have expected to see standing in front of him, holding a smoking .357 revolver to Brodsky's back.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12: Fallen Angela**

"Angela." The name stretched thin on Booth's lips, a combination of disbelief, concern and disapproval. He wanted to be dreaming again. He didn't want to let himself admit that it was true, and yet there she was, sweet and virtuous and charitable as he'd always known her to be, only now she was standing in front of him with a gun poised in the dominant hand that had so many times before infused the world with beauty with a pencil or a paint brush, having just murdered a man in cold blood. The picture before him didn't add up. It _couldn't _add up. She couldn't have done this. If she had, that would mean the Angela he knew was dead. He'd lost another precious friend.

Her chest was rising and falling under her trench coat on the tides of adrenaline, as though the effort of taking a life had left her winded. When she looked at Booth, her elegant, almond-shaped eyes were sad and distant – all but empty. "I had to shoot him, Booth," she asserted breathlessly, deciphering the question behind his tone when he said her name. Even her voice didn't sound like her own. It was deeper, somehow, more sombre.

Deciding not to argue this just yet, Booth let his eyes stray to the revolver that was descending slowly to her side. "Is that Brennan's gun?" He inquired instead, recognizing the .357.

She looked down at it suddenly, holding it flat in one palm to study at belly-button height as though seeing it for the first time. "The day after she died," she began somewhat abstractly, frowning down at the weapon as though the details were hard to remember, "I went to her apartment. I found it and took it. I thought, 'if Brennan could be taken down, why not us? We could be next'. I had to protect the rest of us. I had to protect my son."

Booth considered this for a moment. "I can understand that," he conceded finally in a low voice, expression unchanged. Then his brow furrowed and he shook his head reprovingly, "but Angela, you should have let me finish him."

In that moment all the emotion Angela had been supressing to execute this undertaking rose to the surface; Booth could swear he saw her entire heart liquefy in her eyes as she stared directly back into his, unblinking. "You didn't deserve to become a monster, Booth," she shook her head as though coming out of a trance, her voice returning to a pitch more like her own. A single tear escaped one of her eyes and slid over her angelic cheekbone, leaving a single-wide trail of saltwater on her olive skin.

Booth lifted his eyebrows a hair. "And you did?" He opposed softly, voice butterfly-delicate as though he were speaking to one that might flutter out of his reach at any moment.

Angela's answer was ready, her expression stoic. "He killed my best friend," she replied dispassionately, as though this should have been enough explanation. Then she elevated her chin half an inch, indicating the lack of remorse she felt for what she'd done. A challenge sparked behind her dark eyes, a dare, almost. "You gonna arrest me?" Her statuesque shoulders twitched slightly under the trench coat in what Booth interpreted as an indifferent shrug. He deduced that she would have been perfectly alright with that, that she'd even expected it might happen, that it had all been worth it, in the end.

He appraised her for a long minute, tried to imagine cuffing her wrists behind her back and reading her her rights. Pondering this, he found the answer came to him only too easily. "It was self-defense," he justified coolly and with a miniscule shrug of his own. "H-he came at you. I saw the whole thing."

Angela's features softened. For a moment Booth even thought he saw the twitch of a smile ghost her lips. "Thanks, Booth," she said, her suddenly-temperate voice warming against his soul. He nodded tightly, but otherwise didn't say anything in response. Glancing down at Brodsky's body, he started formulating a story in his mind that he could believably convey to the FBI; she'd overheard the location, and followed him here, which she had. That part wasn't a lie. But then there was the issue of the bullet striking Brodsky from behind – that one was going to be hard to explain.

Taking his sudden silence for pensiveness, Angela ducked down a bit where she stood to try and catch his gaze. "Hey," she cooed gently in that mothering tone that was most definitely her own, "you okay?"

Booth's gaze snapped up to her and he almost laughed. "Are _you_?" He countered, feeling suddenly lightened by the irony of the question.

Angela sobered so abruptly Booth could almost hear her countenance plummeting. "I don't think I'll ever be okay again," she confessed truthfully, looking at the ground and speaking in that foreign, detached voice again. Then she met his gaze again, hitting it with a weighty impact. "I've accepted that."

This time it was Booth who turned his eyes down, wishing he had never asked. "Come on," he said after another moment, glancing up and extending a chivalrous arm toward her. "I'll take you home."

She balked at this, recoiling a bit as though he were holding a live rattle snake out to her. "I don't want to go home," she contested adamantly, with a stubborn shake of her midnight head. "Can you take me back to the lab? Cam found a new anthropologist and Hodgins and everyone got called in to work on the case…he's there now with Mikey…."

Booth's answering expression was reproachful, and a bit pitying. "Angela," he chided ever so gently, "I really don't think you should be working –"

"_Please_, Booth," the desperation in her plea grabbed hold of him. "I really need to work right now."

Blinking, Booth found he almost had to shield himself from the personal proximity of this statement. The need to channel emotional sorrows into a sense of duty was something he could _definitely _understand, and for him to deny her this outlet now would have been hypocritical of him. Even so, he regarded her in reluctant silence for a long time before finally nodding his assent, an honourable promise gleaming in his seal-brown eyes. Only then did she step willingly forward to accept his outstretched hand. "Watch your step," he implored quietly as he guided her around the fallen corpse that had once been Jacob Brodsky, now face-down in a less than dignified fashion in the dirt, offering her his hand more as if she were a lady deserving of his gallantry than the assassin of a wanted murderer. "Watch out for the blood there…"

Booth called in the shooting from the car on the way back to the Jeffersonian, Angela stonily quiet in the passenger's seat next to him, mocha eyes downturned, expression tired, like she had no desire to have a good time ever again. As promised, he reported that Brodsky had been shot by a friend who'd followed him to the scene using her own weapon in self-defense. The sniper had been armed at the time, and Booth would have had to shoot him in order to diffuse the situation anyway. He also asked that as a special favour the investigators who went to clean up the scene didn't look too carefully at the particulars – his memory of the event was hazy and he couldn't guarantee the details would line up. Besides, it was only the end result that really mattered, once they had his word. He also phoned the lab to let Cam and the others know he was on his way, that Angela was with him safe and sound, and to keep a close eye on her at least for the next few hours, considering what had happened. He wasn't sure whether or not Angela heard any of this, or if she was simply a vacant shell of a body in the seat next to him, reliving the experience over and over in her head, feeling the kick against her hand as the bullet left the gun, seeing the human life fall before her at her own hands, the way he had done so many times in the past. _With every shot we all die a little bit_, he'd once told Brennan about his time as an army sniper, and he believed it now more than ever.

Arriving at the Jeffersonian, Booth pulled into the back parking lot behind the lab and put the car in park. Then he glanced over at Angela, his eyes melting with compassion while he waited for her to get out, or at least to move. "Ange." His voice was gentle, barely more than a whisper, but even so it nearly caused her to jump out of her skin.

Drawing in a deep breath through her nose, she turned to look at him, hand over her heart and eyes blinking rapidly as though working to dispel a trance. "Thanks, Booth," she sputtered before he could say anything else. Then she turned her face away and reached for the door handle. Booth reached across the center console and stayed her with a tender hand to the wrist. She turned back to face him, expression questioning.

"Are you going to be okay?" He inquired, so quietly Angela almost didn't hear him.

He hadn't even finished the question and Angela was already answering him a too-lively nod, her chin bobbing up and down with such rapidity that Booth wondered whether she had any control over it at all. "Yeah," she assured him lightly, though her voice was several octaves higher than it normally would have been – than it had been after the shooting, as a matter of fact – and he could read a tightness in her features that was unmistakably indicative of inner turmoil, anxiety or even panic. Angela was a terrible liar.

He gave her arm an affectionate squeeze. "Do you want me to come in with you?" He offered, only vaguely aware of how much he sounded like an overprotective parent dropping their child off at school for the first time.

Predictably, she replied with a vigorous shake of her head. "No, thanks," she sighed. "I kind of want to keep the drama to a minimum when I get in there, you know?"

Booth nodded and looked out the windshield. "Understandable…" he mused. Even facing forward he could feel her eyes on him, regarding his pensive stance with a gleam of reciprocal concern.

"What are you going to do now?" She wanted to know, oblivious to the ground-breaking impact her words had on him. She had meant it casually; _are you planning on heading home for the night? Are you going to back to work? _But he interpreted it with a staggering amount more gravity. He was quiet for a moment, thinking, and then a small, humourless smirk stumbled across his lips in such a way that Angela found she actually got scared, though she couldn't have said why. Then he turned to look at her, and she almost cried; all at once his dark eyes were open as a wound, and so tortured they almost hurt to look at. There was the smallest, saddest smile on his lips that she thought she had ever seen, and his forehead was smooth, unfurrowed for the first time in days. As an artist Angela couldn't help but think he looked at peace. And not in a good way.

"Don't worry about me," he told her after a long, pregnant silence, his voice so honest she couldn't possibly bring herself to argue. He indicated the back door to the lab with a pointed sidle of his eyes, raising his chin ever so slightly in that direction. "You go in there," he instructed softly, "and you do what you gotta do to occupy yourself until the day's over. And then you go home to your husband and your son and keep living your life." His voice dropped lower still so it was barely audible, and she had to lean in to hear it. His seal-brown eyes locked onto hers with the kind of intensity that had once made her stomach do cartwheels, before she'd been made aware of more important things in life than sex. "When you see Michael," he went on, his voice barely above a whisper. "You give him a kiss. Tell him you love him." He arched expectant black eyebrows. "Promise?"

Angela's eyes were wide and unblinking, turning to liquid as she searched his face. "Booth –"

"Promise." It wasn't a request this time.

Angela stared back at him in silence for a long moment before she made her decision. Then she leaned abruptly across the center console and wrapped one adoring arm tightly around his neck, planting a brief kiss briefly on the skin of his cheek before she hooked her chin over the bridge of his shoulder, closing her eyes so she could savour the warmth of their friendship. "I promise," she murmured tightly in his ear, her breathing constricted by the well-muscled arm that encircled her back. "Thank you," she told him one more time, then pulled away. She was out the passenger's side door and about to close it behind her when she turned and jack-knifed at the waist so she could look at him from the sidewalk outside. "I'll see you later?" She confirmed, her tone genuinely lighter and a hopeful question in her eyes.

Booth let his gaze linger on her for a beat, the question dangling precariously between them before he slipped on his sunglasses and turned back to face the windshield, kicking the car back into drive as he did so. "Yep," he replied, matching her levity of voice, though the word sounded jagged and forced as it left his lips, as though someone were holding a gun to his head to say it. "See you later."

Driving away, Booth watched in the rear-view mirror to make sure Angela turned and strode straight up the stone steps into the Jeffersonian, where he knew she would be taken care of. It took her a minute, but she did it. He then turned his gaze back to the road ahead, considering both it and the question she had posed to him: _"What are you going to do now?" _A voice reiterated it in his head, the same voice that had been nagging at him for the past few days from his irritating subconscious; _What _are _you going to do now?_ Up until this point Brodsky's death had been the only thing driving him, the only focal point keeping him motivated to put one foot in front of the other. Now that it was done with, suddenly the road ahead looked like a very bleak place. He thought about all the precious things he still had in this world – his health, his job, his son – and tried his best to colour that road with promise, but still only managed a few bright specks which dissolved in an instant the moment he thought of the one precious thing he _didn't _have. The one he would never get back, and the one he needed the most right now. It was in that moment that he decided, finally, to let go. In that moment, for the first time since any of this had begun, he opened the channel fully to the hurt and the memories. He let his heart break. ***

"So, as soon as the…you know, crispy bits are cleaned off the bone I'll be able to do a facial reconstruction." Angela waggled a finger around the temple of the blackened skull of their burn victim then turned to face the others on the forensic platform, clipboard cradled protectively over her chest. "As usual, I'll run it through the mass spec and see if we come up with any missing persons matches. Without knowing for certain how she died I won't be able to determine with total certainty what she looked like, though. Not until I can factor in the damage." Angela's doe-like eyes found her boss'. "Cam, when did you say your new forensic anthropologist was getting here?" She queried with an almost disturbing lightness, pretending as she did so not to notice the blatantly aghast expressions radiating out of every one of her friend's features like an army of heat rays directed solely at her. Finally, though, it became too much for her to take. "_What_?" She demanded, spreading her arms and then letting them fall so the clipboard slapped her upper thigh in exasperation.

"Angela," Cam began delicately, eyeing her employee as though she were an explosive that might detonate any moment if looked at the wrong way, "don't you think you should maybe go home?"

Stiffening, Angela turned her back on her friends, shielding herself from the line of fire under the pretence of inspecting the nasal cavity of the victim. "Why?" She asked again, though she had a feeling she was already well aware of the answer.

This time it was Clark who answered, speaking so slowly it sounded like he was addressing a kindergartner about quantum calculus. "Because…you just shot and killed another human being," he replied, spreading his gloved hands and raising his eyes to the ceiling as though this should have been childishly obvious. "Generally that tends to have a detrimental effect on the brain's occupational functions –"

Angela whirled around. "I'm fine, Clark," she snapped, crossing her arms over her chest as though daring him to maintain otherwise. That's when Hodgins rushed forwards from the line-up, cradling her face between his hands when he reached her and speaking with their noses mere inches apart the way he did when he was trying to get something through to her that he meant on a profoundly deep level, like that he loved her or that she needed help.

"Angie," he crooned, voice fervent to get her attention but quiet so that only the two of them could hear, "take Mikey and go home. Get some rest and take some time to just…" he shook his head, "process all of this. You need to just –"

"What I _need_," Angela interjected, loud enough for everyone to hear as she put special emphasis on the word, "is for everyone to keep working, and stop treating me like a basket case. Believe me, the best thing for me right now is to just keep doing something productive so I don't stop to think too long about what I've done." As she said this, her voice lilted, pinched upwards by the distress that tangled in her throat, making her chest feel tight. "If I go home now, that's just what I'll end up doing and it'll only make me feel, like, a zillion times worse, so could we please just…" her voice steadied, resolved, "keep working?"

The rest of her coworkers eyed her commiseratively over Hodgins' shoulder, and her husband took a step back, letting his caring hands fall back to his sides, his expression resigned. Cam sighed heavily from where she stood by the steps with the others, arms folded and shoulders tight as though she didn't like at all what she was about to say. "Alright," she uttered quietly, looking at the floor. "Dr. Weis will be here later this afternoon. In the meantime why don't we work on getting the bones cleaned and any preliminary analyses done?" She glanced around at the others, eyes wide and all-business as she changed gears. "Let's hop to it, people."

"It seems strange, doesn't it?" Dr. Edison remarked as the group dispersed and he and Hodgins turned together to snap on latex gloves. "Being back at work and knowing Brodsky'll never threaten any of us again – still can't believe it was Angela who did it…" he added on afterthought and Hodgins raised both eyebrows in concordance.

"Believe me, I never would have thought she had it in her," he replied in hushed tones before Clark could go on, stealing a furtive glance at his wife over one shoulder to make certain she wasn't within earshot. "Of the two of us I always just assumed _I _would be the one more capable of murder, even a bit of a risk for it." Catching sight of Clark's discontented frown at his choice of phrasing, Hodgins backpedalled. "Not that Angela murdered Brodsky," he amended quickly, hitching one shoulder toward his ear in a half-shrug. "Don't get me wrong; the bastard had it coming."

Clark eyed him for a moment through a side-long glance. "Anyway," he retraced the conversation back to his last point, looking only mildly daunted as he turned his gaze away from Hodgins and back to the utensil tray in front of them, "I guess what I mean is, it's weird being able to just…get on with our jobs, like everything's back to normal."

Suddenly Hodgins went quiet, his eyes lowered unseeingly to the forceps in his hand as a ruminative grimace hijacked his features. "Only they're not," he contested softly, more to himself than to anyone as he considered the grievousness of this. "They won't ever be…."

To this Clark didn't offer anything in response. He couldn't deny it was true; the only thing weirder than going back to work without a vindictive army sniper breathing down their necks was going back to work without Dr. Brennan. Although things had hardly ever really been normal in this place to begin with, now they really hadn't a hope of ever even being remotely close again. Behind them on the other side of the platform, Angela's cell phone shrilled to life in her pocket.

"Do you think we'll ever see Agent Booth again?" Clark wondered aloud, casting Hodgins a new line of conversation as they readies petri dishes for particulate samples.

Hodgins got a look on his face like he hadn't thought of this. "Oh man, I hope so," he replied abruptly, iceberg eyes suddenly nervous as he raised them to Clark's face. Then he blinked and looked around, a freshly disturbing thought occurring to him. "I wonder what he's up to now," he breathed, expression distant and mildly concerned. Behind them, they heard Angela pick up her phone and say hello. Hodgins continued. "Brodsky was pretty much all he could focus on since Brennan…I hope he's alright. Sometimes it seems like Booth was the one who was shot through the heart –"

"Angela!"

They heard a clatter and both Clark and Hodgins whirled around. At first they didn't see anything; everyone else seemed to have vanished from the platform into thin air. Then Hodgins noted Angela crumpled on the ground behind the cadaver table in a pool of forensic tools that had spilled from the tray she'd brought down with her, her cell phone open and discarded about a yard from her limp, outstretched arm, as though she'd dropped it. She was unconscious, with Cam kneeling over her already checking her vitals, her face draining of colour as she gazed down at another fallen friend.

Hodgins heart was in his throat before he was even aware he was moving, his feet carrying him automatically and with almost superhuman speed to his wife's side. "Is she alright?" He demanded of Cam as he dropped to his knees next to her, cupping the side of Angela's comatose face in one hand.

Cam sat back on her heels, straightening with a mingled look of relief and disconcertment on her features as she studied Angela in bemusement. "She fainted," she shrugged as though the lack of complexity in the matter rattled her. "Maybe that shooting had more of an effect on her than we thought." She offered, glancing up at Hodgins.

Hodgins bent low over his wife's face. "Angie?" He murmured softly, his voice gruff with concern as he looked at her closed eyelids. "Can you hear me?" There was no response.

A few feet away, Clark squatted and retrieved the phone off the floor where it had fallen. Straightening to his feet again, he eyed it curiously and held it to his ear. "Hello?" He proffered a bit tentatively. "Who is this?" There was a beat and then Clark lowered the phone to frown at it disconcertedly, allowing it to snap shut as he raised his gaze slowly to the others under knitted brows. "They hung up," he relayed with a light, unfulfilled shrug of his own. Hodgins and Cam granted him a moment of shared inquisitiveness before they returned their attention to Angela.

Cam started to get to her feet. "I'll go get some water." She volunteered. ***

"Hey," Hodgins knocked softly on their half-open bedroom door before nudging it gently open with the corner of the tray he had spread between his hands. Immediately, he was met with a sight that made his heart feel like someone was carving it slowly into small pieces so he would never be able to put it back together again. Angela was doubled-up on her side of the bed, the lamp on the nightstand casting her light cocoa skin in a soft glow, her bent knees draped in the duvet that covered her up to the waist as she perched one elbow on top of them, using her upraised hand as a cradle for her no-doubt splitting head. Her eyes were closed, and she didn't even look up at him when he came in. "How are you feeling?" He carried the serving platter he'd found in the topmost cupboard over the fridge over to the bed; on it sat a mug of herbal tea – still steeping – a peanut butter-and-egg salad sandwich – Angela's favourite since she got pregnant – as well as ten milligrams of benzodiazepines.

Angela groaned and lifted her temple from her fingers, taking a moment to open her eyes and look over at him. Her expression was drawn, as if she'd been reliving something unpleasant for the last bearable time. "I-I don't know," she stammered, drawing in a deep, steadying breath between answers. "Still…confused."

Eyeing her somewhat guardedly, Hodgins placed the tray on the mattress between them and crawled into bed next to her. "Well," he muttered softly, sweeping a strand of her midnight hair behind her ear with two tender and nurturing fingers, "Mikey's down for the night so you can just focus on getting some rest now." They'd asked Angela after she'd recovered on the couch in Brennan's old office – it was the only one that _had _a couch – about what had happened out on the forensic platform. Although he, Cam and Clark had done their best not to overwhelm her with interrogations, it was hard not to come across ravenously curious. She'd been disoriented, and even a bit frenzied, but they'd managed to get enough coherent evidence out of her to deduce that her swooning had had something to do with the phone call she'd received. When they'd tried to question her about it, her edginess had peaked to near hysterics. She'd almost had a full-on anxiety attack when asked who it was on the other line, her breath heaving on broken, flustered sobs so the most helpful words they could make out were "impossible" and "it can't be." Once they'd managed to sedate her panic enough so her heart rate calmed down and she was at least aware of where she was, needless to say, they hadn't thought it wise to press the issue; Hodgins hadn't dared ask her about it again for the remainder of the afternoon and evening as he brought her home and diligently detained her to bed rest, keeping a watchful eye on her state of mind all the while.

Angela was silent for so long Hodgins worried she was about to go catatonic on him, and wondered whether she was back in that shipping yard, putting a bullet through Brodsky's scapula, or back in the lab, innocently answering her cell phone only to be greeted by a voice that for some reason had torn her apart right there on the spot. "Can I just say," Hodgins offered then in as good-humoured a voice as he could in an attempt to bring her back to the land of the living, "that you annihilating Brodsky was, like, the hottest thing ever?"

Turning her head slowly to look at him, Angela fixed him with a withering look. "Yeah," she responded thickly, her voice so dry it could have rivalled the Sahara, "well, excuse me if I'm not exactly feeling the 'hotness' factor at the moment."

Hodgins let his gaze fall to the mattress, sheepish. "Right," he grumbled a bit awkwardly, feeling his attempt at making her feel better fall flat. He briefly considered what to say next, and then his eyes found the pills. "Well, here, take these." He reached for the tray and offered them to her in an open palm, picking up the tea in his free hand as a chaser. "The doctor prescribed them to me when I was having my Gravedigger nightmares. They're absolutely lethal. They really got the job done…" he eyed her a bit impishly, thinking back to the nights he'd spent at her place when that case was over, "among other things."

Again, the look of death. "Honey." The one word of address was enough of a warning.

Hodgins rearranged his features and shifted back on the bed. "Right," he said again. "Hotness factor." Feeling only slightly dejected, he watched adoringly as his wife downed the pills and a hearty gulp of tea in one swallow. Ignoring the sandwich, she shifted the tray over to the nightstand and outstretched a hand to switch off the lamp overtop of it.

"Oh, God," she moaned wearily as she shimmied down and sank her head into the pillow in about as uncomfortable-looking a way as Hodgins had ever seen anyone do. He draped a hand protectively over her slender form as he reclined himself next to her and got under the covers. "There's no way I'm ever going to be able to sleep tonight…." ***

The sound of Angela's snoring was mostly what kept Hodgins up until 2:27 in the morning. That and the tornado of hypotheses cycling around in his head about that phone call, who it could have possibly been on the other end of the line, what they could have told Angela to make her pass out. He found himself wondering, once again – would it ever stop? – if his wife was in danger. It seemed their lives were always at some sort of risk or other these days. Suddenly he had a new-found respect for Booth; how had the man ever dealt with it? Did he ever sleep, at all? Thinking of Booth made him wonder, with a pang of sympathy and concern, what the agent was doing now, whether he was at home or somewhere else. Had he gone to the pool hall again? Cam had diligently informed the rest of them about that little excursion…. What was he feeling? What was he planning?... How much was he hurting? If Hodgins thought he and Angela were suffering in the aftermath of all of this, he couldn't imagine what Booth must have been going through. He only hoped it didn't have so deep an effect on him that he lost his ability to think clearly, if he hadn't already, to see reason….

Suddenly Hodgins' musings were cut short as a noise from the kitchen alerted his attention. Craning his head up off the pillow, he waited with his neck bent uncomfortably and his breath detained for a long moment, to see if he'd imagined it. Nope. There it was again. The first little resonance had been the sound of his front door opening; this one was it closing softly behind an intruder stepping over their threshold. There was no mistaking it. He would have known that sound if he'd been trapped in a wooden box for months and the only things he heard up until now were the rhythms of his own breathing and heartbeat.

Heart pounding, Hodgins rolled over to swoop low over Angela, clasping her upper bicep gingerly in one hand and whispering mutedly in her ear. "Stay here," he ordered softly, though whether she heard him or not he couldn't be certain, as her only response was an incoherent grumble – something about flaming chickens – as she shifted her position to roll away from the disturbance of his voice, eyes never so much as fluttering once.

Slowly, calculatedly, Hodgins swung his legs over the side of the bed and padded silently on the balls of his feet across the hardwood to the bedroom door, visibly cringing as the creak of him opening it sounded deafening in the stillness of the night. He could feel his breathing becoming unsteady and nervous, beads of sweat formed across his brow line like a crown and moistened the insides of his palms. He considered the facts; he _knew _– didn't suspect, _knew _– there was someone in his living room who shouldn't be, he knew they were probably here to inflict harm on either himself, his wife or his son – why else would they have chosen two-thirty in the morning to drop by; it wasn't as though it was a popular visiting hour – and he knew he was the one who would have to stop it somehow. Now he was the protector. It was his job to make sure nothing more happened to the people he loved more than anything. More than his own life. All at once he wished he could have been more like Brennan and kept a revolver in his nightstand, or at least a pro-issue baseball bat. For someone as suspect as he was of the society he lived in, it was surprising even for him that he didn't.

Tiptoeing out into the kitchen, Hodgins blinked widely through the blackness, in an attempt to see anything past the inky shadows that might have been furniture, or lamps, or human bodies. The kitchen was an unwalled, adjoining room to the living room, and he knew he was in full view of the front door. He braced himself, glanced around half-frantically for anything that might be useful as a defense weapon. "Okay…" He kept his voice quiet, but didn't bother trying to sustain stealth; whoever was in here with them, they both knew about the other's presence now.

Sidling behind the counter into the kitchen, Hodgins felt around the surfaces of cutting boards and wine bottle openers for something, _anything _he could take up in hand, that might make him feel even slightly less vulnerable….

"Hodgins?"

He froze. His breathing froze. His heart froze. His brain processes froze, all of them going on intellectual and emotional lockdown. All at once he found himself thinking the same thing he'd heard Angela repeat over and over again like a harried broken record that afternoon; _Impossible_. He knew that voice…. _Great, _he mused sardonically to himself, suddenly thinking he must be in way more trouble than he'd thought, _now I'm hearing things. _He wondered briefly if he could be dreaming again, and then the voice spoke up again, this time so undeniably clear there was no possible way he could doubt he was conscious; "Don't freak out," it beseeched bracingly. And then a light switched on overhead, dousing the room in truth.

Hodgins' eyes took in the person standing by his front door, outstretched hand covering the light switch on the wall purposefully, and he jumped back with such force that he knocked over a ceramic utensil holder stocked with wooden spoons and ladles and whisks which scattered to the tile floor with a heart-stopping crash.


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's Note: Hehehe…third time's a charm ;)**

**Chapter 13: The Woman in Limbo**

In the bedroom, Angela rose groggily out of her slumber, alerted by the noise. Propping herself up on one elbow, she squinted toward the closed bedroom door in consternation.

Out in the kitchen, Hodgins was gaping at a face from beyond the grave, a face he had once known but had relinquished hope of ever seeing again, framed by nut-brown hair of collar-bone length and accented by bright, teal-blue eyes. He was standing with his back pressed against the counter so hard it looked like he might go right through it, as though if he could back away any further, he would.

Brennan took a tentative step forward, palms raised toward him in a non-threatening manner. "Hodgins," she intoned evenly in that reasoning, rational voice he was so used to hearing on the forensic platform, "it's okay."

Hodgins was sidling along the counter back in the direction of the stove so fast he looked like a hermit crab with his red hair and white boxer shorts. He, too, had one hand raised in Brennan's direction, facing her, only his arm was outstretched in such a way as to suggest he didn't want her coming any closer. "Okay," he panted, trying to sound reasonable despite the fact that his voice was several octaves higher than it should have been and his eyes were so wild Brennan wondered if he would ever blink again. "Okay. You're a ghost. That's cool." He took another step sideways and hit the wall, pressed his back against it.

Knitting her eyebrows incredulously, Brennan shook her head. "No, you and I both know there's no such thing as ghosts," she contested practically, effecting that sensible head-tilt he had come to know and love so well since she'd been his boss.

Hodgins gazed back at her and focused on steadying his breathing. "Okay," he rasped again, only vaguely aware that he was beginning to sound like a broken record, not that he cared. "A ghost in character but still, a ghost none the less…." Whenever he used the word 'ghost' his voice broke a little as though he were having trouble reconciling with the concept. Brennan had never seen his blue eyes so pale.

Beginning to think coming here may not have been the most well-thought-through of ideas, she took another step toward him. "I can explain –" she began again in a level voice that seemed to radiate calmness, but Hodgins was already parrying her movement with an elaborate leap toward the stove, where he procured the grilled cheese skillet they'd used to make dinner and raised it one hand, poised hatchet-style with the flat bottom facing her.

"No, you stay away from me!" He commanded, normally-smooth voice hoarse and deranged as he looked at her, eyes glued as though it were impossible to tear them away.

Brennan levelled him with a disparaging gaze, almost looking as though she wanted to roll her eyes. "Hodgins," she sighed, sounding like a long-suffering kindergarten teacher trying to reason with a five-year-old, "put down the frying pan."

But the entomologist was already shaking his shock of ginger hair, the muscles in his jaw so tense Brennan wondered if his skull was going to fracture from the pressure. "Uh-uh. Not a chance in hell, baby…" He was twirling the piece of cooking equipment ever so subtly from the wrist, the way a baseball player swivels the bat in the air while they're waiting for a pitch.

Unfazed, Brennan took another step, gradually closing the distance between them. "I don't want to hurt you," she informed him coolly, her tone cautionary. The very idea seemed absurd to her, but if this was the way he was going to react, then she had no other option but to disarm him. Even recovering from heart surgery with her ribs taped she was still certain she could take Hodgins with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back, but that, it seemed to her, was best left as a last resort.

"Stay back!" Hodgins ordered shakily, clearly doing his best to sound more confident than he felt and failing miserably. "I'm warning you…." He raised the frying pan higher, holding it like a weapon as she approached.

Eyeing him reproachfully, Brennan kept coming and coiled the fingers of one of her upraised hands so only her index finger pointed skyward. "I'm going to count to three…."

A massive clatter from the kitchen caused Angela to jack-knife at the waist so she was sitting bolt-upright in bed, gaping at the door. She'd heard voices, but the bleary stupor the sleeping pills had put her under had caused her reaction time to be vexingly delayed. For the first several minutes it felt as though she were stumbling through the beginning stages of consciousness in a fog. Now, though, she was fully awake, and wondering whether it would be wiser to inspect what was going on, or head straight for the baby's room. "Honey?" She called through the closed door, her voice edging between trepidation and panic. "What's going on?"

Hodgins was pinned against the fridge with one arm twisted behind his back, frying pan futilely discarded several yards away on the floor. "Angie!" He yelped in response, his voice cracking so badly it almost resembled that of a prepubescent boy. "For God's sake, don't come out here!"

"Now do you believe me!" Brennan demanded loudly in his ear, the full weight of her body against his back as with her free hand she mashed her entomologist's face into the surface of the freezer door. "A ghost couldn't detain you physically, Hodgins, even if the concept of immaterial supernatural apparitions _was _theoretically plausible, which it's not…."

Again, Angela's voice, alarmed and muffled by the bedroom door; "Jack?" It inquired nervously. "Who is that?"

"No one!" Hodgins barely managed to get the answer out before Brennan hitched his elbow up higher and redoubled the force with which she held him against the fridge as he struggled against it. "God!" He cringed ardently. Somehow, though, he still managed to argue. "No," he maintained stubbornly, his own voice muffled by the chrome outside of the fridge. "The casket…we had a funeral…I was there!"

Brennan redoubled her grip on his arm. "It was a dummy, Hodgins! Same as at Booth's funeral."

He let out a bark of humourless laughter that was half-petrified, half-agonized. "That's…" he grunted against her grasp, "ridiculous. Although for a dead woman I have to admit you really are freakishly strong…."

Behind him, Brennan rolled her eyes skyward in exasperation. "Hodgins, how can I explain this in a way you'll understand?" She asked herself more than him, wracking her brains for a way to make him stop writhing in her grasp. Then it came to her. "Oh, okay!" She spun him around so he was facing her, slamming his back against the fridge with a resounding rattle as she pinned him with a significant gaze. "Conspiracy!" She declared, watching him closely for a reaction.

All at once Hodgins went absolutely still, as though she'd tranquilized him. His sparkling husky eyes took her in for a long moment, jaw half-agape. Then, for the first time since they'd encountered each other that night, he blinked. "ANGELA!" He bellowed his wife's name so loudly it made Brennan jump and let him go, but he made no move to run this time. Though his chin was inclined ever so slightly in the direction of his bedroom door, his eyes were still fixed intently on Brennan, gazing at her in an entirely new light as though he were seeing her for the first time. She watched as a slow smile unravelled across his face, so broad she wondered if it might reach all the way up to his eyes. Then he pounced, springing forward so suddenly _she _actually took a step back from _him._ Both hands went immediately to her face, cupping it on either side while a thrill of near hysterical laughter bubbled up from his chest. Even including the time they had been sent rare jewel beetle fossils for him to examine from Thailand, she didn't think she'd ever seen him this excited, and frankly it scared her. In another moment he had both arms around her neck, crushing her against him so tightly it was all she could do not to cry out when tenderness scorched her lungs.

"Hodgins," she gasped in his ear, granting him an appreciative pat on the back of the shoulder despite herself, "ribs."

"Oh," he released her immediately as though the one word had been a spring trigger. "Sorry." Still, he refused to let her go entirely, holding her at arm's length with one hand on her shoulder so he could gaze into her face with more awe and adoration than an employee should be permitted when regarding their boss. He shook his head again, slowly this time, and Brennan watched as his eyes procured a sheen of emotion. "It really is you, isn't it?" He affirmed in a wispy voice, his gaze roving from the top of her forehead all the way down to her feet and finally back up to her face. She offered up an earnest smile and nodded. He looked at her for half a beat and then hugged her one more time, gentler now. "God, I could just kiss you right now," he murmured over her shoulder, then amended when he felt her stiffen uncomfortably in his embrace. "I won't though," he promised, sobering.

That's when they heard the bedroom door swing open and both turned, breaking apart ever so slightly, to see Angela's statuesque form occupying the frame in her bathrobe. She had a rather unsavoury case of bedhead, raven hair billowing about her face and shoulders like a Halloween Medusa wig, and she was squinting at them from under bleary, half-closed eyelids that looked as though they were carrying the weight of anvils, and she was having trouble keeping them open. When her searching gaze found Brennan, however, she went absolutely still.

"Angie," Hodgins' voice was cracked and emotional as he took a step back to fully unveil Brennan's form to his wife, gesturing indicatively toward her, "look at this."

Angela remained where she was, eyes suddenly wide open and jaw half-agape as her husband's had been. Tears sprang into her eyes. She remembered the phone call she'd received earlier that day on her cell. The call she'd convinced herself she'd imagined; _Ange, _the voice had said the minute she'd picked up – the voice she could have gone years without hearing and still recognize – _Is it true you killed Brodsky? _That was the last thing she remembered before passing out. Now, she realized, that inkling, that…_itch _she'd felt afterward in her gut had been spot-on. She never should have ignored it. She should have let herself believe the truth.

"Hi, Ange," Brennan said again now, folding her hands a bit sheepishly at waist-height. There ensued a long, pregnant silence during which no one moved, and for a moment Hodgins wondered if Angela was going to pass out again. Then Brennan offered up a new thread of articulation, altering tactics. "I'm sorry," she said right away, sounding as though these words had been festering just under the surface since she got here. "I tried to call, but –"

"I knew it." Angela's voice was barely audible, so thin neither Hodgins nor Brennan could be certain they'd heard it. And then it solidified. "I knew I wasn't crazy." Already she sounded choked with emotion as she shook her head, as though shaking herself out of a trance. She looked at Brennan through eyes that were both openly admiring and terrified, as though she were afraid her best friend might vanish from her sight at any moment, as though she were worried this was all still a dream. "That was you on the phone today," she surmised frailly, the wheels finally kicking into gear inside her head. "And the reason…the reason I never felt you around me…"

At this Brennan's expression turned from heartfelt to mildly annoyed. "If you're referring to spirits," she corrected a bit disparagingly, "as I already told Hodgins, the physical probability of –"

Angela rushed her before she could finish that sentence, careening into her and throwing her arms around her with such force Brennan actually staggered backwards, wincing heavily as pain exploded in her chest a second time. "God, the two of you are going to be the death of me," she managed in a tight voice, the irony of this statement far overshooting the landing of her head as, after a moment she softened and molded into Angela's embrace, cradling her gently against her body as her best friend proceeded to release wracking sobs into the bridge of her shoulder. All at once she felt a pang of hearty remorse for all of her friends, to have had to go through all they had. To be honest she hadn't thought it would have made that much of a difference, but evidently her assumptions had proved inaccurate. At least Booth would have known better….

"H-how…?" Angela stammered when she'd managed to collect herself enough to speak, though her features were still agonizingly contorted when she drew back just enough to look Brennan in the face. "How did…?" She seemed unable to coax the remainder of the query out, still hiccoughing violently under the force of the tears.

Brennan offered up a comforting, apologetic smile. She had never felt anyone's pain as much as she did looking into Angela's face in that moment. "I'm so sorry, Angela. No one could know until we were sure Brodsky was caught. I never wanted to put you through this, to put _anyone _through this…" she was shaking her head ardently, but her voice trailed off then, lost for what to say next. Fortunately Angela towed her along.

"But," she gasped as her breath hitched tearfully in her throat, "you were dead…." On the word 'dead' her voice dropped to a whisper, as though to utter the very word would jinx this whole thing into the fantasy she knew it ought to be.

Brennan's smile turned sheepish. "For almost a minute," she confirmed soberly. "I was revived with defibrillators after we left the scene. After that the FBI thought they could use me as a kind of secret weapon against Brodsky; he had traces on every agent that had ever been assigned to his case, no matter how covert, but he would never suspect a dead woman to be keeping tabs on him. Plus the Bureau knew that with me out of the picture, Booth would focus whole-heartedly on catching him, which redoubled our chances for success. Brodksy would experience a false sense of triumph at my death, which would make him overly confident, make him more vulnerable to mistakes."

"So, then," Brennan could see the wheels turning behind Angela's tear-filled eyes, struggling to process it all, "the anonymous report the FBI got on Brodsky's position…that was you?" Brennan's answering, smug smirk was all the confirmation Angela needed. She drew back a little more, her grip on Brennan loosening while Brennan's tightened around her. "I don't believe this," she half-whispered, more to herself than anyone as she fixed her gaze unseeingly on a spot on the kitchen floor a few yards away.

Behind her, Hodgins was shaking his head critically, the way a parent shakes their head at a child who should have known better than to tarnish the living room walls with Crayola. "Well," he shrugged as though the outcome were beyond his control, but his muscles were tense as he did so, "I would say this is why you should never trust the government, though that seems pretty self-explanatory…."

Ignoring him, Brennan focused on her friend. "Ange?" She lowered her gaze to try and catch Angela's downturned eyes. "Are you alright?"

All at once Angela's eyes snapped back up to Brennan's face, suddenly ablaze with indignation. "Am I alright?" She parroted a bit scornfully, daggers in her voice. "Of course I'm not alright! None of us are alright! You let us think that you were dead!" As she pronounced this the feeling in her voice reached such a pressure that it broke, and she was forced to watch as Brennan's features tightened and her chin began to tremble commiseratively. There was no way Angela could deny she looked equally as devastated.

"I'm so sorry," she reiterated in a pinched voice, sounding on the verge of tears herself. She redoubled her grip around Angela's back, holding her tighter as a mother might a child she thought was at risk of running away. She levelled her with the sincerest gaze she'd ever dealt. "That's never what I wanted," she assured her fervently. "I got here as soon as I could once I found out…and I'm sorry you had to do what you did so I could come back. We didn't plan it that way." Angela started to dissolve into tears again and Brennan drew her into another embrace, rocking her back and forth slightly as she cradled the back of her head against her shoulder, smoothing her hair lovingly. "But I'm here now," she whispered soothingly against her friend's temple. "Just think of it as a bad dream, okay? It's over now. It's all over."

Over Angela's heaving shoulder, Hodgins looked at Brennan with a sudden severity like he'd just made a connection between blowflies and time of death in a case. "Does Booth know?" He demanded, his bright eyes insistent.

Brennan raised her chin to look back at him, her expression calm and oblivious as she answered. "I haven't seen him yet," she admitted too-casually, clearly having no idea of the ramifications her 'death' had had on him. "I had the FBI take me straight here after we got the report and the phone call didn't go through. I had to make sure we weren't getting false information first…."

Angela pulled herself together so abruptly it alarmed Brennan when she pulled back out of the embrace and turned to look at her husband, swiping at the tears with the back of one hand as though they were little more than a mild irritant. They exchanged a brief, communicative glance and then Angela looked back at Brennan, her expression deadpan. "I'll drive," was all she said, voice startlingly steady as she reached for her keys. ***

"You know," Brennan mused from the passenger's seat next to Angela as they crossed the breadth of the sleeping city outside in Hodgins' car, "I can't believe you actually shot Brodsky." She turned her head to regard Angela with a mixture of admiration and prudence. "You once told me the worst you could do was spit with deadly accuracy," she reminded her, a hint of good-natured accusation in her voice.

At this Angela offered up a dark smile, mocha eyes trained on the road. "Yeah, well," she sighed a bit ruefully in response, "that was before I thought someone took my best friend away from me forever – that has an effect on a person."

Brennan considered her for a moment and then returned her eyes to the windshield. "Mmm," was all she said in response, though what Angela heard out of that was, 'I can relate'. She had her feet propped on the dash in such a spontaneous, laidback manner as Angela had never seen from her before, her temple propped against the knuckles of one fist as the streetlights and lines of apartment buildings passed unseen before her meditative eyes.

"You know," Angela fired Brennan's conversation ignition back at her tactfully, "Booth's kind of gone off the deep end, too." As much as she hated to be the one to make Brennan feel guilty about this, she felt it necessary to tell her before she walked in on him in the state he was in, had been in for days, now. "Drinking and gambling, and totally obsessing about this Brodsky case…" Angela's voice trailed off as she waited expectantly for a response. It was a long minute before one came, and it wasn't the answer she had been hoping for.

"Hey, I have a question," Brennan postulated a new thread of conversation as though she hadn't heard a word of the last one. "The EMT's said that something kept my heart going long enough for them to be able to revive me once my pulse finally gave out in the ambulance, and when I woke up my ribs were broken…" her voice trailed off and she glanced across the front seat suggestively at Angela, waiting for her to connect the dots for her. When she didn't, she ploughed on. "My anthropological experience in forensics tells me that's a result of having received cardiopulmonary resuscitation…" Again, she waited. Again, no response. Angela's expression was stoic. Brennan's lips tightened into a thin line. She studied Angela's face, still turned adamantly toward the road, and read the difficulty behind her eyes. Finally, she decided it would be best to make the connection herself so Angela wouldn't have to relive that awful day, for once, positing an explanation based upon pure conjecture. "It was Booth, wasn't it?" She guessed quietly, eyes trained on Angela's face so she could gauge a reaction. She watched as the betraying flicker clouded Angela's features, her unfeeling mask giving way to a heartbroken reminiscence.

"Once he thought you were gone," she illuminated haltingly, eyes flickering uncertainly in Brennan's direction, "he…" she took a deep breath, elbows straightening against the steering wheel, "he tried to perform CPR. He thought it would bring you back. We were all there. He wouldn't stop…"

"Well, he was right," Brennan raised her eyebrows pragmatically in response, ever the logical one. "If he hadn't continued the chest compressions I never would have survived long enough to make it to the ambulance." Suddenly she looked doleful, pensive. "He saved my life…again."

Finally Angela turned to look at her from the driver's seat, her expression pitying as she took in the fond memories dancing across her friend's face as Brennan gazed into her upraised lap. "Sweetie," she began, forcing the words from her throat as though they were barbed with thorns, "there's something you should know; Booth is –"

"Not right now, Ange," Brennan cut her off before she could divulge any further. Lowering her feet from the dash, she straightened in the passenger's seat, squaring her shoulders against the backrest with a kind of satisfied resignation, a relief she didn't wish to taint with more heartache. "I just want to see Booth."

Regarding her critically for a moment, Angela sighed and returned her eyes to the road. Clearly fate was the one keeping the upper hand in all this, considering how many curveballs it had thrown their way thus far. It was obvious none of them had any real say in the matter, whether they wanted to or not. So, she decided, whatever the outcome, she was going to relinquish that role to fate one more time in the way this all played out. Spontaneity had certainly never steered her wrong before…. ***

"Sweetie," Angela laid an arresting hand on Brennan's shoulder as she hastened toward the front door of Booth's apartment. Brennan turned and raised two expectant eyebrows at her. "Maybe I should go first?" She suggested with a pointed furrowing of her own brow.

Brennan looked at her as though she'd sprouted a second head. "Why?" She laughed, the very idea of someone else approaching Booth on her behalf striking her as absurd.

Angela had to work to curb an eye roll. "Because," she drawled, as though this should have been obvious, "Booth might react the same way Hodgins did, only he'll have a gun instead of a frying pan."

Brennan levelled Angela with a dubious tilt of her brunette head, the set of her sapphire eyes emphasizing the sheer ridiculousness of the implication. "Booth won't hurt me," she opposed confidently, and moved to finish closing the distance to the door. Angela caught her again, snagging the edge of her sleeve in half a fist.

"Still," she objected, ever so gently despite the rather urgent necessity she was feeling, "why don't you just…let me?" She hitched one shoulder in a half-shrug under the pretence of nonchalance. "Booth…hasn't been himself lately and it might be best if we didn't…you know…give him an aneurism or something."

Brennan considered her for a long moment, her expression reluctant before finally she threw both hands in the air in acquiescence, inclining her head on the back of her neck with a dramatic sigh as she pivoted on one heel and swung back so she was standing behind Angela. "Fine," she grumbled, crossing both arms over her chest like a begrudged child, "though I still think it's unnecessary. You know," she added, acquiring a sudden air of vexation about her that made Angela smile inwardly in reminiscence, though her next words made her turn and stare at Brennan with something of an appalled expression, "I expected more from Booth. I would have thought, after everything we'd been through, after experiencing the same thing himself three years ago, he would have known better. I mean, closed casket? Delicate murder case? Shoddy details from the press coverage? Come _on_."

"Brennan!" Angela gaped at her best friend, reproachful.

Brennan's answering shrug was wide-eyed and innocent. "What?" She demanded, all matter-of-fact. "He should have figured it out."

Angela perched both hands on her hips. "_You _should have told him," she accused sternly, looking up at Brennan from under her lush lashes and setting her jaw in that motherly way she'd always had but had become so good at since giving birth to Michael.

At this Brennan looked affronted. "Believe me, I wanted to!" She emphasized as though she expected Angela to know as much already. "But I couldn't tell _anybody_. The FBI made sure of it. I knew Booth would understand given it was for the sake of my own safety, not to mention our friends…" she let her voice trail off, thinking. "Besides," she tacked on when Angela didn't look half as convinced as she'd expected her to, "I figured he knew."

Angela sucked in her chin, cynical. "How could he _possibly _have known?" She challenged.

"Well…" Brennan had to think about this. In truth it had hardly been more than a feeling she'd had, but as this was logically impossible to explicate in scientific terms, she couldn't possibly admit it to Angela. "I…"

Angela floated her eyebrows, expectant.

"I guess I just thought that…" she took a deep breath, knowing even before she articulated it how ridiculous her next statement was going to sound, "if something happened to one of us the other would be able to sort of…_feel _that they were no longer there. I thought that if I was still alive Booth would be able to sense it…you know…when the _facts_," she emphasized the word salvagingly, "didn't add up."

Blinking back at her, Angela allowed the corner of her mouth to twitch in the subtlest of smirks as she considered her friend's words. She just managed to stop herself again before she rolled her eyes, though the urge was incredibly tempting. "Okay," she rejoindered in a blatantly first-of-all kind of manner, "well if the _facts _are what you're choosing to focus on here," – she decided to humour Brennan – "then you'll have to forgive that some of them may have slipped past Booth while he was busy dealing with the possibility that it was true. That you were really gone." Angela's voice softened and Brennan retreated into silence, taken aback.

"Why should that make any difference?" She queried after a moment, prompting a look of utter exasperation from Angela at her incorrigible obliviousness.

"You're kidding, right?" She demanded flatly, pinning Brennan under a disbelieving glare.

Brennan regarded her for half a beat, not liking what she saw as her oceanic eyes darted between Angela's before she tore her gaze away and gestured emphatically to the entrance to Booth's apartment. "Can you _please _just open the door, Angela?" She requested none too politely. "It's been a long day."

Finally finding something neither of them could argue about, Angela expelled a puff of humourless laughter and turned back to face the door. "You're telling me," she muttered sardonically under her breath, raising a fist to knock. Behind her, Brennan fell back into a begrudged silence. She rapped three times on the wood and they waited. Brennan counted slowly to twelve before Angela tried again, louder this time. They waited.

"Booth's a heavy sleeper," Brennan offered after another minute during which there was no movement from inside the apartment, clearly impatient. Angela tested the knob.

"It's locked," she relayed, with the air of someone who was about to give up and go home.

"Oh, hold on." Brennan pivoted on her heel one more time and backtracked a few yards down the hall, where she squatted and procured a shoddily grey-stained plastic boulder about the size of a fist – she was pretty sure it had once belonged to Parker's Tonka Construction Site set – and straightened to hand it to Angela, who regarded it with a kind of derisive scorn, half-humoured, half-disparaging.

"A fake rock?" She articulated, cocking one eyebrow incredulously. "Indoors?"

"Wouldn't fool anybody," Brennan reiterated with a fatalistic shrug. "I've told him a thousand times."

Smirking in good humour, Angela overturned the chiselled toy in her palm to extract the tiny silver key inside, then turned and used it to unlock the door. Once inside, the first thing she did was switch on a light, a theatrical surprise being the last thing she wanted to inflict on the agent at this hour, especially now. Brennan followed close on her heels. "Booth?" She bellowed rather tactlessly into the quiet apartment before Angela could stop her. Angela winced. Even if Brennan did seem a bit more stoic somehow since returning from the grave, a bit more…pliable, she still hadn't lost that intrinsic quality of social unorthodoxy that infallibly reminded everyone around her of a bull in a china shop. "Booth!" Under Angela's trepidatious gaze, Brennan made a beeline for the bedroom, tossed open the door without even bothering to knock. She appeared a moment later, looking dejected. "Not here," she relayed to Angela, looking only slightly dismayed. Chancing a glance toward the bathroom, Angela noted that the door to it, too, was ajar, and it was empty. The lights in the kitchen were off and it appeared to follow suit in its vacancy.

"Booth?" She tried calling out herself, in case the agent was somewhere they hadn't thought to look and he simply hadn't responded yet on the grounds that he'd interpreted Brennan's voice as a figment of his imagination. No answer to her, either. "We should check the pool hall," Angela suggested, turning her attention back to Brennan.

Brennan wheeled around so fast it looked as though she were on a turnstile. "The _pool hall_?" She parroted, sounding incredulous.

"Sweetie, I told you –" Angela raised a hand so it was level with her temple and twirled a finger indicatively around one ear while she whistled a two-tone 'crazy' refrain.

Brennan responded with a scrunching up of her features which seemed to suggest she didn't know whether or not to take her seriously. Either way they agreed and proceeded out of the apartment to check every late night bar and billiard in the area, including the one Booth had taken her to pour tequila down her throat and fire her from their first case ever. Coming up empty handed, they went to the Casino, then his office, then the cemetery where Brennan's fake headstone sat tritely over her fake grave, then, just for good measure, they went to the Jeffersonian, though neither of them could imagine why he would be there in the middle of the night. They even checked the police station, wondering if perhaps he had somehow gotten into more trouble than anyone would have expected. Finding it regrettably – they supposed – Booth-free, they finally settled on heading back up to his apartment, both of them too exhausted to continue the search. They wouldn't have known where else to look, anyway. Not at this time of night. It wasn't as though the diner or the Founding Fathers were open….

The sun was just beginning to crown over the horizon when they climbed the stairs up past the liquor store Booth lived over. They couldn't help but entertain the hope that perhaps he'd returned while they'd been out searching, and they'd just missed each other somehow. This hope was dashed, however, when they arrived up at the door and pushed it open to find the apartment still as dark and still as they'd left it, with no signs of life whatsoever emanating from inside. Brennan collapsed immediately into a chair at the kitchen table, releasing a monstrous sigh of resignation while Angela made for the cupboards. "I vote we just stake out the night here," she yawned, massaging her eyelids with the thumb and index finger of one hand, "or what's left of it. Maybe Booth'll come back from wherever he is in the morning."

Sighing commiseratively, Angela reached up and helped herself to two mugs and a sugar pot from the top shelf of one of the cupboards. "Sweetie," she groaned, not a little condescendingly, "it _is _morning. You should really get some rest. I'm going to make some tea. Do you want some?"

Brennan shook her head, suddenly looking more tired than she had even before the shooting, when she and Booth had been having it out for days on end. "No," she mumbled in a voice barely audible, "just some coffee would be good. I don't want to sleep until I've seen Booth." Even as she said it, however, her chin fell into the cradle of her folded elbows on the tabletop in such a way that Angela wondered if she were about to fall asleep right there. She was about to suggest she move over to the couch, just to close her eyes for a little while, if nothing else, when her gaze stumbled across a picture frame, blaringly out of place, on the way to the spoons. Apparently taken from its pedestal on top of the bookcase in the living room, it was propped on the countertop against the toaster; inside it was the article published years ago in the _Washington Post_ featuring Booth and Brennan's crime fighting partnership: _FBI Agent and Scientist an Unlikely Match, Solve Double Murder_, the headline read, beneath which was printed a snapshot in black and white of the two of them seated shoulder-to-shoulder on a courthouse bench, sharing a celebratory coffee in Styrofoam to-go cups, eyes turned toward one another and laughing. Picking it up off the counter, Angela realized it hadn't gotten there of its own accord; half-covered beneath it was a scrap of folded yellow legal paper, the frame having been used as a paperweight. Gently shifting the framed article aside, Angela put down the mug in her other hand and picked up the paper.

"Hey," she intoned softly, half-turning back to face Brennan, "was this here when we left?" She held up the paper and Brennan, reluctantly raising her head out of her arms, swivelled around in her chair to look. When her gaze landed on the neatly-folded scrap she knitted her brows.

"I don't know," she replied truthfully, curiosity tightening her voice. "What is it?"

Turning her attention back down to the paper, Angela unfolded it between her hands. Her brow furrowed. "'_Parker doesn't deserve a father who can't keep him safe,'_" she read, tone disconcerted. "'_Tell him I'm sorry and make sure he gets everything.'"_ On the last line Angela's voice turned airy, trailing off on a breeze of dread as realization settled over her.

At the kitchen table, elbow slung casually over the back of the chair she was in as she twisted in it to face Angela, Brennan blinked back at her unwittingly, her expression displaying little more than a mild puzzlement. "What does that mean?" She questioned, voice brazenly clueless.

Angela couldn't be sure if Brennan's brain was too sleep-deprived to comprehend the sheer gravity of the situation at this moment, or if it was merely her characteristic ignorance that kept her from plunging into the same pit of despair Angela felt herself descending into at break-neck speed when she read over the words, unmistakably scrawled in Booth's handwriting. Either way all she could manage in response for the first several seconds was several shallow breaths of entwined horror and anguish, her gaze turning panicked as she looked from Brennan to the letter and back again, consciousness making the connection between the two, emotions despairing at the knowledge that there was nothing she could do to break it. All at once, for what felt like the thousandth time over the past twelve hours, Angela felt her breathing paralyzed with panic and disbelief, grievous sobs rising in her throat. "I think…" she croaked finally, her voice painfully choked as she forced her frantic gaze to Brennan. Her friend had to lean in to hear what she was saying; "I think it's a suicide note."

A beat passed during which neither of them spoke, and Brennan didn't appear to react at all. Her expression turned to stone, her piercing seaglass eyes solidifying on Angela as though she were a ghost. Then, very abruptly, she stood up, her features rearranging themselves in an outraged scowl that looked almost insulted. "That _idiot_."


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14: Friendly Fire**

"He's still not answering his cell." Brennan punched the END CALL button on her own Blackberry and cursed the device as she lowered it from her ear. Heaving a shallow, hasty sigh, she fired a restless glance out of the passenger's side window as the city – now just beginning to gear up for the work day – cruised by outside, as though she wondering if she could be any faster on foot. Next to her in the driver's seat, Angela held both hands white-knuckled on the wheel, picking up on the nervous energy radiating off Brennan. Her friend was practically vibrating. "God, how could he be so stupid?" She pitched the phone to the floor with a rather violent clatter so she wouldn't end up crushing it in her grip. Every muscle in her body was tense. Her newly freed hand went to her lips, clenched, as though she were trying to eat her fist while she shook her head in obvious dismay.

Angela chanced a glance over at her from the driver's side, all concern. "Well," she replied softly, choosing to disregard the fact that this was obviously a rhetorical question, "he's hurting, Sweetie."

Brennan's response burst so readily from her lips it was as though she had been considering it for hours, waiting for an excuse to articulate it. "So was I when I thought _he _was dead," she reasoned crossly, "and I never once considered…." Brennan broke off and took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a beat to temper the emotion in her voice. "Why would he do this?" She asked of no one in particular, her voice low all of a sudden. "It's not rational. Suicide isn't a solution; it's just a way of taking the easy way out. The only thing it changes is that two people die instead of one. How is that logical?" Brennan turned her eyes on Angela, challenging her to answer this time.

Gaze trained on the road, Angela thought hard about this for a minute. She had to admit, her friend had a point (always count on Brennan to be so practical her logic was irrefutable, even when it seemed completely devoid of empathy), but even so…. "Booth isn't like you, Sweetie," she asserted finally, confident in her response. "He thinks with his heart. You should know that about him by now. He can't…compartmentalize the way you can. He can't look at something that's so close to home objectively enough to see what makes sense and what doesn't. It's the same reason he never figured out you were alive, that none of us did. Even I had a feeling, but it was all just too…raw to face. Allowing ourselves to believe you were alive and then finding out we were wrong would have been a million times worse than just grieving and trying to move on right from the get-go." She looked over at Brennan, gauging her expression for a response. Her gaze was downturned, her expression sober. She was listening. "Anyway," Angela ploughed forward, taking advantage of this rare instance of attentiveness from Brennan, "all I'm trying to say is that Booth isn't logical when it comes to the people he loves…" Angela broke off for a moment, bracing herself for a rebuke on her choice of terminology. To her surprise, though, Brennan remained silent. "All he knows is that it hurts, and he can't see a way out. He's not thinking with his head, anymore. He's acting with his heart."

Still staring into her lap, Brennan considered this and then raised her eyebrows finally at her knees, drawing in a pained breath through her nose as she did so. "That's a lot of heart, Booth," she murmured, again, to no one of consequence in the vehicle, shaking her head. Then she blinked, starting a bit when the memory of Booth once saying those exact words to her rushed her on cue. _Brain and heart, Bones. Brain…and heart. _That was the two of them in a nutshell, it seemed.

Hearing her, Angela let go of the wheel with one hand and stretched it across the front seat so clasp Brennan's, giving it a reassuring squeeze while her gaze alternated between the road and her friend's face. "You know this isn't your fault, right?" She asked, picking up on a certain vibe coming from Brennan that made her uneasy, but her friend looked at her as though she'd – conversely – accused her of murder.

"I don't blame myself, Ange," she practically barked in response, sounding more like herself (and less like Booth) than ever. "It's not my fault Booth is stupid."

Angela fired her a reproachful look. "You know that's not true," she opposed strongly. And then, "Don't you think you're being a little hard on Booth?"

At this Brennan looked affronted. "No," she snapped, tone painstakingly matter-of-fact. "He made a reckless, immature decision. I just don't know what he was thinking –"

"He wasn't," Angela cut her off. She was beginning to recognize that steeliness that entered Brennan's voice whenever she was trying to block out an inconvenient emotion.

"I hate the FBI!" She segued abruptly, her voice beginning to rise again as her frustration flared. "I mean I _really _hate them! I told them there were people I needed to contact! I tried everything I could, but they wouldn't listen!" Brennan shook her head again, vexed as she thought back on it. "I should have fought harder. I should have just…" she looked at Angela. "Would you believe those bastards handcuffed me to my hospital bed?"

Angela narrowly managed to stifle the bark of laughter that swelled in her throat at this, turning it instead into a rather lame excuse for a combination cough and hiccough. "Yes," she replied bluntly, and then she sobered. Looking over at her friend, she could see how distressed Brennan was. She was letting off so much stress voltage she could have powered a small city, and it was obvious she was lashing out as a way of diffusing some of the discharge. Expression softening under a regard of sympathy, Angela decided to alter tactics. "We'll find him, Sweetie," she promised, nodding as she did so as though to reinforce the assertion, but again Brennan was already answering before the words were even off of Angela's lips.

"You can't know that," she contested predictably, and behind her purely analytical resolve Angela was sure she read fear.

"Yes I can," she countered, nodding and doing her best to convince herself she wasn't lying to her best friend. "We'll find him. Just breathe, Sweetie."

Expelling an exasperated breath, Brennan collapsed back against the passenger's seat, eyes closed again for a moment while struggled to suppress the panic she could feel festering in the pit of her stomach, threatening to make her sick. "Can't you drive any faster?" She demanded, doing her best to temper the sting in her words so they didn't sound accusatory.

Angela floated two carefully-sculpted eyebrows. "I could if I knew where we were going," she parried smartly, also having to remind herself not to take out her anxiety on her friend, who needed her composure so badly at the moment.

Brennan took this as a prompt to think. "Where would he go?" She mused aloud, trying to put herself in Booth's shoes. It wasn't easy; his shoes were a recklessly haphazard place at the moment – wholly unsystematic, and that wasn't the way her brain worked at all. She decided to try it her way instead: deductive reasoning. "There are only three places Booth spends the majority of his time," she postulated. "His house, the lab and work. We've been to his apartment and we already checked his office…."

"The Founding Fathers?" Angela suggested hopefully.

"Not open this early," Brennan rebuffed.

Angela thought for a minute. "The diner?"

Brennan's gaze was floating in sarcasm as she turned to look at her friend. "What could he possibly try and pull off at the diner?" She challenged sardonically. "Death by pie?"

Angela's shoulders visibly sagged. "I guess you're right."

"Throw back a few shots of chocolate milkshake to take the edge off first?"

"Okay, Brennan, you've made your point."

Choosing to completely bypass an energy suck like remorse, Brennan jack-knifed so her head disappeared beneath the dash for a moment while she fished for the phone she'd discarded. She fumbled around under the seat for half a second and then resurfaced, thumb already flying across the keypad.

"What are you doing?" Angela questioned, eyeing the cell cagily.

"I'm trying the lab," Brennan informed her lightly, as though this should have been obvious. She finished dialling and hit send. Angela dove for the phone just as Brennan was raising it to her ear. It clattered out of her hand and the car swerved as Angela leaned across her friend's lap to make a grab for it before it could slip between the bottom of the seat and the passenger's side door.

"Ange!" Brennan chided indignantly as her friend took the phone from her and righted the vehicle. "We have to exhaust all our options!"

"Let me do it," Angela amended, switched the phone to the hand that was furthest from Brennan and holding it to her ear as it started to ring.

"Why?" Brennan demanded to know, looking offended.

Angela shot her an eyebrow raise that was on par with something explaining basic addition to an accountant. "In case someone _besides _Hodgins happens to answer?" She jibed, as though this should have been childishly obvious. Brennan's only answer was a well-aimed eye roll.

There was a click as someone picked up on the other end of the line. "Jeffersonian Institution," a proverbial voice answered. "Forensics Department." Good call.

"Cam," Angela intoned, firing a pointed glower at Brennan. "It's Angela. Is Booth with you guys?"

There was a pause while Cam read into the question. "Uh…no," she replied finally, the timbre of her voice lifting on the second word to make it sound like a question, which on some level it was. Angela could almost picture her shifting her dark eyes guardedly. "You were with him more recently than we were," she went on to allege. "I haven't seen him since the funeral."

Angela's gaze flickered to Brennan cagily. She did her best to swallow the anxiety that rose in her throat at seeing her best friend sitting straight and substantial next to her in direct pursuit of a mention of her funeral. She had to work to ignore the irony – unwitting as it might have been – in Cam's words. She could tell by the resonance of the connection that she was on speakerphone. That was the main reason she started to panic when Brennan failed to hold her tongue any longer. "Tell them to check _everywhere_," she ordered fervently. "The parking garage, my office, all the exhibits…"

"Angela," Cam's voice was wound alarmingly tight as she interrupted, "who is that?"

Brennan opened her mouth to answer.

"Nobody," Angela snapped before she could, widening her eyes at her friend in a cautionary glare. "So you haven't heard from Booth at all then? You have no idea where he might be?"

Another pause while Cam debated pursuing the suspiciousness of the second voice in the call. "No," she reiterated finally. "Why? What's going on?"

"Um…" Angela worked to hold the wheel steady while she shooed away Brennan's attempts to snatch the phone away from her like she was swatting at a mosquito, flagrantly gesturing for her to lay low while she talked. "Nothing too serious. Just, you know, thought I'd check in on him is all…." Her voice wavered when Brennan made a particularly aggressive attempt and she had to resort to prodding her in her fractured ribcage to fend her off.

"Booth's missing!" Brennan ejaculated tactlessly as she was forced to recoil in her seat, one hand clutching the side of her sternum tenderly.

Angela cringed. There was a lengthy silence on the other end of the line, this one more loaded than the others. Then Vincent Nigel-Murray's voice; "Did…that sound like…?" He let the question trail off, halting. For a long moment Cam said nothing, and Angela imagined her glancing around at the others for answers, then she heard her husband chime in from somewhere in the background, his voice muffled and groggy from sleep deprivation.

"Ah…there may have been something I forgot to mention," Hodgins grumbled in such a way that Angela could almost visualize the puffy redness of his eyes, the way he raised his head out of his arms on a lab table to look at his boss with a somewhat bracing expression. Next she heard him go on to explain about the night before, tried not to picture the way Cam's features became more and more distorted as the story twisted her emotions and sensibilities from the inside out. She waited until Hodgins was finished to release the dumbfounded breath she had been holding. Then she piped up again, her voice closer to the speaker.

"Angela," she breathed tremulously, as though working to supress a mushroom cloud of passions, "put Brennan on the phone."

Angela need only hold out the cell an indicative six inches from her ear, still not taking her eyes off the road as Brennan snatched it impatiently from her grasp. "Hi Cam," she greeted, too lightly as she squared the Blackberry along her own jawline. Cam's answer came out in a bark so abrupt it caused Brennan to flinch and hold the phone away from her ear again slightly.

"If you weren't already dead, I would kill you!"

"Cam," Brennan breezed past this, still dizzyingly on edge, "we've been looking for Booth all night. We've checked everywhere; he wasn't at any of the places we could think of. We found a note in his apartment…we think he might be in trouble."

There was a pause while Cam digested this, her consciousness having to work overtime to keep up. "What kind of trouble?" She queried finally. Brennan was about to reply when suddenly Mr. Nigel-Murray piped up from the background, his voice startlingly animated.

"Oh…my…God," he intoned breathlessly in his distinctive English accent, and from the resonance of his voice Brennan could tell he was turned away from Cam and the phone. Brennan waited while Cam followed his line of attention.

Then, "Oh my God!"

"What?" Brennan demanded, her eyes widening as she suddenly experienced the mad urge to dissolve into the mouthpiece of her phone so she could see what was going on on the other end. "What 'oh my God!'?"

Cam's voice turned low and sombre, as though she'd just watched a two-story family home bowled over in a hurricane. "Oh my God…."

"WHAT!" Brennan was practically screaming into her Blackberry now.

There was a beat of confused, faulty silence while Cam fumbled for her voice. "Brennan," she managed finally, a certain disturbing urgency colouring her somewhat numb tone, "I think we just found Booth." Brennan waited for her to elaborate. "We've got the TV turned to the Channel Seven News here –"

"When did we get a television in the lab?" Brennan interrupted, turning the inquiry on Angela even though she was still speaking to Cam.

Cam ignored her and continued. "The MPD have been trying to talk down a jumper from the fifteenth floor of J. Edgar Hoover since sunup…."

Instantaneously channelling horror into action, Brennan turned two blazing eyes on Angela, her heart in her mouth. "J. Edgar Hoover," she relayed without bothering with the rest of the story. "Drive!"

Angela executed a two-wheeled U-turn in Hodgins' dinky, red car, torpedoing off in the appropriate direction in a shriek of burning rubber and black skid marks. Brennan stayed on the phone with Cam the entire way, steeling herself for any disagreeable updates. Thankfully, there were none. Every part of Brennan's body seemed to be pulsating in the seat next to Angela, as though she were painfully aware of the speed at which the city was reeling by outside, and wasn't satisfied with it. It was all she could do to keep from screaming her desperation to move faster as, with each second that ticked by, the chances increased of Cam informing her of a modification in the broadcast. Her already perforated heart felt as though it was going to explode; she alternated between frighteningly wide eyes, and tightly-squeezed closed ones, swallowing hard in an effort to stifle the anxiety. Angela was almost certain she'd never, in the entire time they'd been friends, seen her this distraught. She was normally the most level-headed person she knew…. For the second time, Angela had to remind her to breathe.

When they arrived at the FBI building, Angela barely managed to gain access to the same block the structure was on due to the news casters' van and the dense crowd of spectators that had gathered on the lawn; apparently when someone was brought to the brink of taking their own life, it became a neighbourhood-wide circus act. Brennan was opening her car door before Angela had even come to a complete stop.

"Brennan, wait!" Angela called after her once her friend had tossed her the cell phone, passing her off to Cam, and was currently halfway out of the car. Hastily burrowing in her purse with her free hand, Angela extracted the .357 revolver she'd borrowed from Brennan's apartment – so imposing it almost didn't look real – and held out the butt end to her in offering. "Here."

Brennan's eyes flickered from the gun to Angela, perplexed. "Wh-? I'm not gonna shoot him!" She contested in a confounded manner, suddenly thinking of a Wild West hero putting his damaged steed out of his misery.

Angela waved the revolver at her pressingly. "You never know when you might need a gun," she professed insistently. Truth be told she didn't like the idea of Brennan going anywhere by herself in the state she was in, and she wasn't entirely sure handing her a loaded firearm right now was the best idea in the world either, but at least she would be able to protect herself if anything went awry out there, like it had the last time she'd rushed to rescue Booth from certain death, especially since now her capabilities for close physical combat were so impeded. And who knew? Perhaps it would help her to clear the crowd with more efficiency….

Brennan didn't waste time arguing, neither did she bother to ask how or where Angela had procured her own personal defense weapon; she seized the gun from Angela without further ado and, executing such a speedy one-eighty it was almost blurred to the human eye, she bolted down the sidewalk in the direction of the crowd. Angela watched her go and then, remembering Cam was still holding on the other end of the line, held Brennan's cell back up to her ear. "Cam?" She asked in an airy wisp of a voice. "Where's Sweets?"

Again, Cam took a minute to catch up. "Um…" she stammered, momentarily derailed, "I don't know," she answered finally. "I guess he's still on leave. Why?"

Angela sighed heartily. "Because I am going to need _so _much therapy when this is all over!" ***

Brennan elbowed her way through the crowd with an almost famished kind of haste, bothering minimally with socially courteous "excuse me"'s or "pardon me"'s. The sole thought galloping past her inner ear with nagging urgency was that she had to get to the front of the throng, to the foot of the building. For the most fleeting of moments she experienced a somewhat disorientating sense of déjà vu, the moment she thought she might black out, suffocate herself with her own stress as she ran until her calves burned. She could recall feeling this way only once before in her life not too long ago – mere days ago, as a matter of fact, though it seemed like a lifetime. Once again, she found herself racing against time, the first place trophy being her partner and best friend's life. This time, however, she wasn't sure her heart would be able to handle it; she worried it might rupture from the pressure and bleed out before she was able to get to him. _Well, _she mused sardonically to herself as she ran, that interminably morbid voice of hers evident even in her thoughts, _at least then our timings would for once be synchronized. _"Why do I always have to save you?" She grumbled instead begrudgingly through gritted teeth, feeling that injustice on an equally annoying level.

The crowd cleared more easily when some of them lowered their upturned gazes to start at the gun swinging at Brennan's side, the sight of the weapon acting like the boulder that parted the stream. She staggered to a halt, gasping for breath as her lungs contorted painfully inside her injured chest, only when she'd reached the very base of the building, just far enough out still to be able to incline her head enough to see fifteen stories up. Her eyes found the figure she knew would be there, and yet had somehow still been holding out hope she wouldn't see, and reality ground to a halt. All around her, the heartening outbursts and commiserative murmurings died away, the entire gathering seemed to fade into a background Brennan was only vaguely aware of, as the only intonation her brain proceeded to register became that of her own breathing, heard from the inside out. All thought processes froze, removing her from the world, and for one brief moment she actually thought she was a ghost. The only thing in this life she continued to see – she continued to _care _about – was the sight of Booth, unmistakable even from this distance, balanced precariously in a standing position atop a railing on a balcony a hundred and eighty feet up. And then she was screaming.

"BOOTH!" She hollered, so loud she thought her lungs were going to explode, her vocal chords strained to such an extent she wondered if they would ever work properly again. "BOOTH!" ***

Booth was looking out over the gathering of spectators, at the city beyond. He'd always loved the view from his office window at daybreak, the shimmer of gold off the edges of the chrome skyscrapers in the sunrise, the blinding gleam as the orb climbed the temporal ladder into the sky, casting it in different hues of fuchsia and ochre. There was a time when he'd once found it reassuring – the promise of a day carrying forward no matter what events took place in the meantime. _These things are beautiful to me, _he could recall Bones saying to him once about the rotation of the Earth creating the conception of night and day, about the way one and one always equalled two, no matter which way you looked at it. Things that were calculable, things you could count on, things that always made sense, even when life didn't seem to…. That conversation was what he had always thought about when he admired the sunrise in the morning. Years ago, before he'd met Brennan, he might have looked at it and experienced a sense of awe at its inconceivable immensity, the great, unknowable infinity that was the universe. He would have admired it for its _incalculability_, but now, somehow, she'd turned it into something even more enchanting by making it familiar, by making it reliable, and he realized that he had no desire to watch it rise even one more time on the world if she wasn't in it, as long as there were no longer enough ones to equal two. That _didn't _make sense.

He'd been ignoring the people on the ground – cops, coworkers, newscasters, civilians, _anyone _– trying to talk him down for the past hour or so, too preoccupied, too resigned to his own considerations to pay their assertions any heed. He felt such a sense of loss, not just of a partner but of himself, that he knew he'd long since let his head slip beneath water, far, far out of reach of retrievability. He'd always been taught it both as a law enforcement professional and as a soldier that it was when you no longer knew who you were, when you'd lost any grasp on personal principle or motive – that was when you became the most danger to yourself. Now he knew it as a fact to be true. He'd always prided himself on being the protector, on being the one who made everyone else's lives that much more bearable by taking the blows for them. It was the one reason he pushed on every day, the reason he thought he deserved a son as wonderful and radiant as Parker, and the reason he'd always believed God had placed him on this earth. Now he'd failed to do even that. In his eyes he no longer deserved any of it; his purpose here was served. The longer he lingered the more of a waste of space he became. He wasn't afraid of dying. If Bones had had to go through it, why shouldn't he? Besides, he thought as he steeled himself for the terminal fall, it would all be worth it if it turned out he got to see her again, one more time face-to-face….

"BOOTH!" As if on cue, her voice sang up to his ears on the breath of a wind, distant as it was, still unmistakable for any other. Closing his eyes, he savoured the figment of his own imagination for a moment, trying to pretend, just for now, that it was real. "BOOTH!" He opened his eyes and blinked. That time it had been much clearer, definitely _sounded _real…. He let his eyes wander down to the lawn. As if magnetized, the gravitated immediately to a face in the front he was sure hadn't been there before, the face calling up to him. _Oh perfect_, he thought wryly to himself as his body released an agonized shudder at the sight, _now I'm hallucinating again. _***

As Brennan watched, the wind carried her voice up to him and he looked down, searching for the source. His eyes found hers almost immediately and they locked gazes. She stopped shouting, waiting for realization to descend on him as it had everyone else. After a moment though, she realized it wasn't going to. Something was wrong; when he looked at her it was as though he were looking at a reflection of her, or an apparition – something translucent, as though he was barely seeing her at all. The registration never solidified in his eyes. He was refusing to believe them. Relief was instantly shunted back out by panic as, all the way from the ground, Brennan saw Booth begin to lean forward. Terror gripped her throat and, without really thinking about it, she erected the gun. Needless to say, it was the last thing she wanted to do, but at the moment she saw no other option. She was a good shot. If she aimed high enough….

Cocking the hammer back with her thumb, Brennan worked to ignore the most primal of instincts inside her screaming a protest. She knew she would have to be quick – she couldn't afford to be stalled by emotions. Even so, she had to struggle to stop her hand from trembling as she took aim, steeling herself. Squinting up at Booth, she saw his brow furrow slightly as he gazed down at her, unnerved by the unexpected turn his delusion had taken. She could almost see the oddity of it reflected in his eyes, the sheer mystification followed closely by the faintest of glints of fear. "Don't…move…" she whispered through clenched teeth, beginning to apply the lightest of pressures on the trigger, testing her nerves. When she had her target centered in the crosshairs, she looked away, squeezing her eyes tightly shut and averting her face so she didn't have to watch when the bullet left the barrel. She felt the recoil of the weapon against the heel of her hand, heard her ears ring with the deafening blast as startled screams erupted around her. Looking back up, she noted Booth had disappeared, and sprang immediately into action.

Slipping her index out of the finger hold, Brennan cast the gun to the ground and dashed for the front door of the building, ignoring the breaking news updates she could hear flaring from the surrounding reporters about an "unexpected shooting" at the site of an imminent suicide jump. Far too keyed up to wait for the elevator, she took the stairs two at a time all the way up to the fifteenth floor, the fire in her respiratory system hardly registering as her heart pounded out an abnormal rhythm, somewhat indignant, it seemed, to the extent to which she was pushing it. She tunnel-visioned each impending floor as though she were wearing blinders, intent only on getting where she needed to go as efficiently as possible. By the time she reached the fifteenth red blemishes were beginning to bloom across her vision, making it difficult to see the numbers on the doors as she rocketed past each one – she'd counted the number of office windows from the outside so she would know where to go. If she had been breathing at all it would have been coming in violent, agonized heaves, not unlike the laboured breathing of someone in the throes of a panic attack, but she held that in, finding it more convenient to run on lungs filled with stale oxygen instead.

She found the door she was looking for and tried the knob. Of course, Booth would have thought to lock it. He knew what procedures were like when it came to talking down jumpers. He knew there would be people who would come after him. Desperate, Brennan back reeled a few steps to give herself room to gain momentum and then slammed her shoulder into the wood with the force of her full body weight, crying out when her ribs shrieked at her like a banshee, paralyzing her momentarily with the feverish throb that erupted in her chest. Gasping for breath, she stumbled back away from the door – which hadn't given an inch – wondering why it always seemed to work for Booth when he did it. Still clutching her chest, she wasted no more time in leaning back and raising her heel to the door, thrusting it against the wood close to the knob – right where she knew the link would be – for all she was worth. It crashed open on the second try and she was into the office without a beat of hesitation. Everything after that, she felt as though she were watching from somewhere outside her body, like her brain was registering the presentness of what was happening to her, but her heart refused to believe it. It all seemed to remarkably surreal, like a dream.

She saw Booth sprawled on the floor, stunned, on the inside of the office balcony's railing, propelled onto his back by the force of the bullet. Moving on autopilot, Brennan crossed the length of the office in only a few long strides and dropped to her knees at his side, both hands going immediately to the wound on his shoulder, damming the minimal blood flow. He didn't cry out when she applied the pressure – she knew how painful that could be. It seemed he was too busy staring at her, wide-eyed and unblinking, chest rising and falling in a steady pant while his brain worked to catch up with everything that was happening to him, to register any pain. "Lay still, Booth. Help is on the way," she offered when she realized she had no idea how to instigate a civilized conversation with him, particularly now. Inclining her hands slightly, she snuck a peak at the tidy little fissure in her partner's flesh, noting with satisfaction the way the blood was already beginning to darken and clot, the bullet having torn a clean path through the muscle just beneath the clavicle, missing the tendons of the rotator cuff and any major organs, as she'd intended it to. "It's just a flesh wound. You're going to be fine."

There was a beat of pregnant silence while neither of them spoke, and Booth proceeded to stare at Brennan through startled brunette eyes as though his entire world had (literally) turned upside down, and he was still trying to decide what to make of it. After a moment his gaze began to clear, and she waited while he gasped out a few incoherent syllables, testing his voice. "You…you shot me," he managed finally, his tone half-accusatory, half-bewildered while his gaze remained unchanged, gawking up at her as though she still didn't seem quite real to him.

Brennan bobbed her chin in a hasty nod, her features softening as it turned somewhat arbitrarily into a headshake. "I'm sorry," the apology sprang forth from her lips as though it had been lying in waiting there for quite some time. An unexpected lump rose in her throat and she swallowed hard. "It was the only thing I could think of to –"

"Am, uh…" Booth's halting inquiry rendered her into silence. "Am I hallucinating?" His voice was so tender and airy it coaxed a single tear out of the corner of Brennan's eye.

Again, she shook her head. "No," she answered emphatically, her voice tight.

His dark eyes appraised her for another moment. "Am I dead?" He wanted to know.

A rueful smile played around the corners of Brennan's lips. More tears streaked forth. "No, Booth."

Another beat of silence passed, and again she waited while he eyed her a bit uncertainly, trying to decide how reliable his own consciousness was at that moment. Finally, she watched as comprehension dawned on his features, and tears filled his eyes. Reaching across his chest with his good arm, he took one of her bloodied hands from his shoulder, gave it a warm squeeze in his own. He was surprised when she didn't dissolve into a sprinkling of imaginative fragments at that moment, when his skin wrapped around hers with all the warmth and substantiality of any living, breathing organism that was still long for this world. His heart soared in his chest, and he looked up upon her bright smile with a kind of renewed affection.

At that moment there was a flurry of motion behind them, and in the next instant they were surrounded by a team of medical examiners. Brennan let herself breathe a sigh of relief. She hadn't even heard the ambulance approaching. Forcing herself to her feet, she made to retreat a step or two from Booth's side, to make room for the EMT's to do their job, but she only made it half a pace before she felt a resistance against her arm, the fingers of one hand snagged in Booth's grip.


	15. Chapter 15

**Author's Note: First of all I'd like to apologize in advance for some of the longer rants in this chapter, but I think you'll agree they're necessary. Also, just a heads-up: this chapter contains spoilers for...pretty much the whole series, but again, necessary ;) Okay, deep breath everyone, and...**

**Chapter 15: The Gambler**

Brennan couldn't help but feel the slightest bit uncomfortable as Booth's eyes followed her around his apartment from the couch, the most idiotic of grins pasted on his features while he watched her gather supplies. For the first little while she pretended not to notice, doing her best to ignore his immovable stare as it monitored her every move from the bathroom, where she'd found gauze and adhesive tape in a first aid kit – clean dressings for Booth's bullet wound – to the kitchen to fish a stack of ethnic take-out menus from a drawer by the stove. Finally, though, it became too much for her to bear.

"Could you please stop staring at me like that?" She entreated on her way back into the living room, sounding slightly harassed. "It's creepy."

Booth's rich chocolate irises didn't stray an inch from her as she lowered herself onto the couch next to him, aligning the dressings between her hands as she did so so she had an excuse to look down into her lap. "Sorry," Booth shook his head once in response, that impish grin still stubbornly glued to his features, "nothing I can do about it." Brennan looked up and in his gaze, she thought she saw something melt. His voice softened. "I got so used to the idea of never seeing you again, Bones…" he hitched one shoulder in a powerless half-shrug. "I guess I just still can't believe my luck."

At this Brennan let out a disbelieving chuckle and shook her head, pretending to be impressed. "Okay," she laughed, executing an artfully dubious eye-roll, "that's the Vicodin talking. Why don't I start figuring out what we want to eat while you get friendly with the furniture-?"

"It's not the painkillers," Booth stopped her mid-jest, his expression sober. The message in his eyes was clear; he was done fooling around. When he spoke again his voice was so quiet Brennan could only surmise the words hurt him on the way out; "I really missed you, Bones." Reflected in his eyes she was able to see a world of pain, an incredible weight on the memory of recent events that she wouldn't wish on any of her friends' shoulders, especially Booth's. To diffuse the guilt that gripped her chest at this realization, she levelled him with another incredulous look.

"It was only four days, Booth," she reminded him gently, emanating what she hoped was more poise than she felt, but the torment in his face was adamant as he looked back at her, the edges of his eyes slanting outward as his brow furrowed in obvious consternation.

He drew in a deep breath. "Yes it was," he agreed a bit guardedly, the reality of this fact striking him as extremely hard to believe – it had seemed like a lifetime. "And you know what?" He leaned in a bit, lowering his voice further still as though he were sharing one of the universe's great unknowable secrets. "It was the longest four days…" – he pinned her under a severe gaze and shook his head slowly – "of my entire life."

Brennan regarded him for a long moment, her oceanic eyes scrutinizing for the first time the dense stubble encompassing his nose and mouth – almost a beard – the chaotic asymmetry of his clothes – something one might throw on when they happened not to care what a soul thought about their appearance; she'd been there herself on some needless-to-mention occasions in the past – and the way his eyes suddenly seemed much older – at least a decade – the lines around them and affliction within them somehow deepened, as though they'd had the rare misfortune of knowing a lifetime of suffering at his age. And all at once she felt sorry. Devastatingly so. As much as she'd hoped Booth would be able to stomach it, in her heart she'd known it was a futile hope. She'd known her own demise – staged as it may have been – would have an effect on him, granted she had no way of knowing it would be quite this extreme, but she'd had her suspicions, and still she'd consented to go along with it, all for the sake of catching a killer neither of them would have given two cents about in the grand scheme of things. Sure, she'd resisted in the beginning, doing everything in her power including dismantling her own IV's and blood pressure monitors in an attempt to get back to her friends, to let them know she was alright, but in the end she had agreed. In the end she had made the decision to help instead of hinder on the grounds that the sooner this was all over and done with, the sooner she could contact her friends and everything could go back to normal. She hadn't realized at the time of course that the few days it would take to do so would take a costly and perhaps even irreparable toll on those friends, with what had almost been disastrous consequences. All at once she realized Angela had been wrong. This _was _her fault.

Looking back on the beginning though, she suddenly remembered how she felt upon awakening for the first time after the bullet was extracted from her heart in the OR. She recalled disorientation, then overwhelming gratification when she realized she hadn't died in Booth's arms in Memorial Park, then a dull but persistent ache behind her lungs where she knew her heart was feebly struggling to recover, then an explosion of pain in her chest when she tried to breathe. Almost immediately, she realized her ribs were fractured, judging from the orientation of the sear right in the middle where her breastbone was, directly over her heart, and she realized what must have happened, the events that must have taken place in order to save her life. She could remember dreaming; during that forty-eight seconds when she'd had no pulse, her soul – which she now believed she had – had been on an expedition of truth, of life purpose. She'd been shown all the things she'd known but had been repressing for far too long, as Sweets might have put it; a memorial montage of the person she'd once been, of the people who'd helped her grow, of who she might still become. None of it had anything to do with lucrative authorship or scientific prestige, as she'd once thought it might. Instead she was concerned only with the people she loved, the things that mattered. She saw her father and mother and brother, the strife she'd had to endure in foster homes after that, she saw her beloved replacement family: the lab team at the Jeffersonian – Cam and Zack and Angela and Hodgins – but most of the memories, the most intense ones, had been undeniably centered around her best friend, the sole person responsible for the most change, the most growth in her. She saw the slow dance from the prom she'd never had at her high school reunion, an a cappella harmony of Poco's _Keep on Tryin' _at a table at the diner, a canine burial in the woods, a phone call into the jail where her father was that had resulted in the impossible Christmas tree he'd wanted so badly, a kiss under mistletoe, herself writing a book for days beside a coma bed…. She flashed on a thousand undercover romances, a thousand late-night take-out excursions, a thousand drinks, a thousand embraces, a thousand arguments, and twice that many smiles. And all of a sudden, for the first time in her life, she found she believed in God, because in those moments, not only had she been shown memories, but she'd been shown a miracle. An irrefutable blessing, and its name was Seeley Booth. In the days that followed, despite the clandestine mission she'd been assigned by the FBI, despite the intensive espionage she'd been performing with Brodsky, all she could remember was how much she'd wanted to get back to her partner.

Suddenly realizing how long she had gone without answering, Brennan hastily refocused her attention on Booth's last assertion; _the longest four days of his life. Right. _Looking up at him, she drew a deep, regrouping breath through her system. "If you want to know the truth," she confessed candidly, her eyes turning liquid with vulnerability, "me too." Looking back at him, she realized she wanted to tell him everything; about the dream, about the way it had made her feel…. She wanted to ask him if that was what he had felt when a bad reaction to anaesthesia had sent him into a state of comatose delirium two years ago, and for a time afterwards he'd been convinced that they were married, but instead when she opened her mouth to go on all that ventured forth was, "I'm sorry I shot you."

Booth responded to this with a charitable smile, his lips curling back humouredly over a perfect line of white teeth. "You can shoot me any time you want," he chuckled airily, his eyes still unwavering from her face.

Brennan wasn't quite so resilient. The brightness of his features rivalling that of the sun, she found she was forced to avert her gaze, shielding herself from the heat of his. "I'll remember that," she murmured feebly, undecided whether she wanted Booth to hear her or not as she looked down into her lap under the pretence of rifling through the take-out menus again. That was the thing about her and Booth and communication; even when she stated something as trivial as a jesting rejoinder or anecdotal non sequitur, Booth always seemed to manage to read between the lines. He always knew precisely what she wanted to say even when she didn't articulate it, and even sometimes when she didn't know herself. He was the one person in the world to whom she was an open book.

Booth was silent for a moment, meditative, but she could still feel the roast of his eyes on her face. "Don't you want to know why I did it?" He queried a bit playfully, and from the corner of her eye Brennan saw him perch his temple on his knuckles, his gaze cocked at an angle for a better chance of catching hers.

She didn't look up. "Nope," she retorted bluntly without missing a beat. "As long as you don't do it again. The only reason the authorities didn't cart you off to a psyche ward somewhere was because I agreed to come home with you and babysit."

A glimmer from the tilted head. "I'm glad you did."

Brennan couldn't help noticing the way Booth's voice turned to velvet as he said this, and felt a sudden uneasiness crawl up the length of her spine. It took her a moment to calculate how best to respond. "You're on a lot of painkillers," she reminded him pointedly, to diffuse the unexpected tension that had stretched the air thin between them, but he was ready with a counter-attack.

"So are you," he parried, gentle voice juvenilely persistent.

She levelled him with a superior leer, and he blinked in surprise, his head starting up an inch or so off of his hand. "You're not?" The coolness of his features crumbled, replaced abruptly by alarm.

Brennan shrugged. "I find I'm sufficiently capable of coping without," she replied lightly. "Prescribed analgesics inhibit brain function and impede reaction time. You can hardly be instrumental in an undercover FBI assignment while under their influence. Besides," she shrugged a second time, "the pain really isn't all that bad once you get used to it, and if I had been taking painkillers I never would have been able to shoot accurately enough to save you. In fact, I probably would have ending up killing you." Realizing she'd unconsciously slipped into one of her rants that used to put Booth on edge, Brennan abruptly stopped talking. To her surprise, though, Booth didn't say a word. Instead he proceeded to stare at her as though she were more awe-inspiring than the Sistine Chapel, a tranquil smile on his lips and his deep brown eyes unblinking, as though he didn't want to miss an instant of looking at her. This wasn't the first time Booth had regarded her like this, and, she was sure, it wouldn't be the last; what made Brennan uncomfortable was the fact that he seemed perfectly content to _continue _doing it for longer than she knew what to do with, never once offering a word of diffusion for the awkwardness it mounted.

After a few seconds Brennan found the radiance of his gaze was searing itself into her consciousness again, and she had to look away. Getting to her feet, she discarded the menus on top of the coffee table with a nonchalant toss so they fanned out on the wooden surface like a deck of cards, pretending not to notice Booth's suddenly distressed expression as she turned away from him. "Well," she breathed a wearied sigh and made a beeline for the hall. "It's been a long day, Booth and to be honest I'm not all that hungry so…" she let the implication complete itself. She wasn't simply being evasive – although she couldn't deny it was perhaps a little bit of that, too – the past twenty four hours had truthfully been draining ones, perhaps the most draining she'd ever had to endure in her life, including all her years of travel in third world countries. Between being relayed the information that Angela had successfully disposed of Brodsky to showing up at her apartment only to traumatize her further, to running all over the city looking for Booth so she could do the same to him to saving him from literally a suicide mission with a bullet in the scapula, she wasn't sure she'd ever been more emotionally taxed in such a short period of time. And that wasn't even including all the explaining she'd had to do afterwards, until Booth had a firm grasp on reality and what exactly had happened, and the persuading she'd had to impart upon the EMT's to let her handle the situation from the time they stitched him up so he would be able to walk away with no heavier sentence than a referral for a psychological evaluation – like he had never had one of those before. For the remainder of the afternoon and evening he had still remained uncharacteristically clingy, refusing to let Brennan out of his sight long enough for her to go to the bathroom, not that she would have willingly left him alone for that amount of time anyway, but still, it would be nice to get home to her own bed and sleep for the rest of eternity….

Booth jumped to his feet as she made for the front hall. "Wh-where are you going?" He demanded, his eyes suddenly wide with panic.

Brennan half-turned back to face him, jerking her thumb over one shoulder to indicate her purse and jacket on the table by the front door. "To get –" her conviction faltered when she caught sight of that wounded puppy look she'd grown so used to over the years. She sighed heavily, "bedding for the couch," she finished resignedly, letting her hand drop to her side as she altered course for the linen closet.

It was only as she pulled the pillow and comforter off the top shelf that she realized that warming feeling in her gut was relief. She'd missed this side of Booth. They'd spent so much time and effort putting distance between them with Hannah, and then taking out their feelings about their partnership on one another afterward, that she found he wasn't as attentive toward her as he once was. Back during their first few years working together, for instance, before the Maluku/Afghanistan separation and before Hannah, he would watch her like a hawk, threaten anyone involved in a case vehemently who even indicated the slightest hint of causing her harm. At the time she thought she'd found this nonsensical and rather irritating, but now, she realized, it had been something she'd perhaps subconsciously appreciated and even endeared. A closeness to their partnership that had begun to disintegrate, and now was back full force.

As if to confirm her suspicions, Booth was standing right behind her, much closer than social conventions pertaining to personal space would permit, when she closed the closet door and turned around. Starting, Brennan stopped in her tracks and rocked back on her heels, brought up short yet again by the intensity of his stare. "Do you remember the first thing I asked you when we met?" He questioned, smooth voice barely audible, unctuous irises drilling into her as if she were made of butter.

Swallowing hard, Brennan hugged the linens to her chest, struggling for composure. "You…asked me whether removing the flesh from human remains would destroy evidence pertaining to how the person died," she answered evenly, working to keep her voice from wavering. When she looked up to meet his gaze again she found it to be slightly fragmented.

"Okay, the second thing," he modified, swivelling his eyes away for a second.

Brennan regrouped, hesitated, then answered again, valiantly. "You asked if I believed in fate," she levelled with him.

Booth floated his chin slowly in a single nod, his gaze weighing on her with heavy significance. "Mmhmm," he affirmed, voice so low Brennan almost didn't hear him despite the fact that they stood so close they were virtually sharing the same oxygen. "And you said…" he let the conclusion trail off, prompting.

Brennan permitted him the smallest of nostalgic smiles. "'Absolutely not,'" she finished for him. "'Ludicrous.'" There was a long moment of silence while Booth waited for her to say exactly what she did next; squaring gazes with him fully for the first time, conviction solidified in Brennan's voice, and she felt a kind of bottoming-out thrill as something inside of her threw itself off the edge. "Ask me again."

She waited, rehearsing her answer in her brain while her heart flew into a frenzy inside her chest. Her stomach was doing cartwheels as though her body were in a free-fall, but instead of feeding her the question for the second time in their lives, as she'd expected, Booth lifted one corner of his mouth in that roguish half-grin, a twinkle in his eye that threatened to make her heart stop entirely. "You're different now," he remarked in a voice still barely above a whisper, the glimmer in his eyes turning curious.

Brennan thought it best not to deny this; to come clean on it instead, as she had everything else. "I _feel _different," she confirmed, taking the most miniscule step closer to him so she could smell the camomile she's brewed earlier for him, of which he'd downed an entire mug despite the fact that she knew he hated tea with a passion.

All at once Brennan thought she saw a kind of sadness steal into Booth's eyes as he regarded her then as one might regard the charred remains of a burned-out childhood home, as something precious they'd lost. "Death changes people," he offered with a melancholy half-shrug, not moving his face an inch away from hers despite the indiscrete proximity.

Brennan lowered her eyes, and her voice even further, as though they were engaged in a verbal game of limbo. "So does love." It was as though she'd had an out-of-body experience, and the voice in which the words had been uttered didn't belong to her. For a long moment she had a hard time believing they'd come from her lips at all, then she realized that, for the first time in this way, there was no other woman in the room. She held her breath. _Cards on the table_, she thought abstractly to herself, afraid to figure out how she felt about it.

Booth surprised her by holding his expression admirably steady. From this she was able to deduce that he was either still incomparably good at maintaining a poker face or he had been expecting her to say something of the like, the latter of which would indicate that he perhaps shared some of the sentiment himself. She dared to hope….

"Bones," he half-whispered after too long a moment, halting, seeming as though he was just barely managing to hold her gaze as his eyes turned to liquid, "I feel like we've been given a second chance, here." He rolled his eyes briefly. "Hell, I feel like we've been given so many second chances…like we keep being lobbed these slow, straight pitches and somehow, every time we strike out. A few days ago I thought I'd lost you forever, and I swore to myself that if ever by some miracle I could somehow get just one more chance…" his voice turned brittle and he shook his head. "I would swing through." He let the weight of this fall between them like an anvil, watched as lines creased the porcelain plane of Brennan's forehead. "And now…" he drew in a shaky breath. "You only get so many chances before you have to quit messing around on that plate."

As he so often did with her, Brennan found herself paying attention to the undertow of his words. They sounded decisive, and yet she was picking up on an open-endedness to the statement, a certain lack of conviction. She considered what he'd said; it seemed like second chances were all they ever got, and no matter how many they watched pass by, unclaimed, more kept coming their way. It was as though Someone really wanted them to be together. And it was as though, like Angela had once said about the temporary break-up between her and Hodgins, _"it was like we were both playing chicken and at the last second we both swerved." _Ruminating on this, Brennan suddenly found herself flashing on a thousand missed opportunities, the first of which had been offered promptly not long after they'd met; a rendezvous outside the pool hall Booth had fired her from their first case together in.

_"We are not spending the night together," she laughed after parting lips with him. He followed her into the street as she bolted for the cab that pulled up then._

_ "Of course we aren't," he conceded wryly as though it was common knowledge. "Why?"_

_ She swung her head back around to him as she lowered herself into the back seat, high ponytail whipping around her head like a tassel, playful smile dazzlingly bright. "Tequila," was the only word she offered in response._

_ "Wait!" Booth raised an arm as the cab started to pull away. Brennan lowered her window. Booth leaned on the frame. "So you're afraid when I look at you in the morning I'll have regrets?"_

_ Brennan answered with a ridiculing smirk. "That would never happen," she countered smartly, effectively solidifying his veneration of her forever. And then, in a ritual they would duplicate uncountable times in the future, they parted ways and went home._

Then, more than five years after that… _"I love you."_

_ Brennan stalled, face opening wide in a panic as horror struck her heart like lightning. For the briefest of moments she looked like a deer in the headlights, and then Booth clouted her playfully on the shoulder. "You know, in a professional, 'at-a-girl kinda way."_

_ Brennan eyed him a bit bracingly, unnerved. "'At-a-girl kinda way?" She echoed._

A mere few months later, the worst of them, the bat that had connected with cowhide and fouled… _"I'm the gambler." She stopped and turned to face him, expression sober. "I believe in giving this a chance." He took a determined step toward her. "Look, I wanna give this a shot."_

_ Brennan floated two startled eyebrows. "You mean us?" Then shook her head. "No, the FBI won't let us work together anymore –"_

_ "Don't do that," Booth kept advancing, recognizing an evasive manoeuvre when he saw it and calling her on it. "That's no reason to…" he never finished his argument. His arms closed around her back, locking her in and their lips collided. It lasted all of half a second, but it was long enough for them both to feel the chemical reaction, the five-year-old brew reach boiling point. Then Brennan's hands were on his chest, pushing him away._

_ "No!" She opposed in a strained voice, as though she were working to convince herself more than him. "No!"_

_ He held onto her, refusing to let her go. "Why? Why?" His eyes searched her face, open as a wound, heartbreakingly beseeching._

_ Brennan was shaking her head, struggling to get a firm grasp on rationality, that thing that never seemed to fail her. "You thought you were protecting me but you're the one who needs protecting," she argued, forcing herself to look into the chasm of his eyes, a gaping wound. Still, he wouldn't let go of her._

_ "Protecting from what?" He demanded._

_ "From me." Brennan's voice broke, her conviction crumbled and she started to cry. "I don't have your kind of open heart."_

Looking back on it, even now Brennan could feel the sting of her own cruelty, even if at the time she'd thought she was doing it for his sake. She so badly regretted the crestfallen look that had taken over Booth's features, but not as much as she regretted her own idiocy a year later, when she'd finally realized her feelings for Booth, too late. The "Gambler" fumble had hurt, but not nearly as much as the confession in the car…

_She was crying again. Rain was pounding the windshield outside as Booth drove her through a bad part of town back to the doorstep of her apartment. Her hair was wet, her clothes cold and clingy. She didn't feel any of it. "I got the signal, Booth." Her blue eyes were wide and hopeful, glued to him and shining with tears. "I don't want to have any regrets."_

_ Booth looked like a soldier caught between two pairs of crosshairs; no matter which way he fled, he would run into a bullet. He chanced a glance over at her across the front seat, expression distressed. "I'm with someone, Bones," he managed finally in a small voice, just barely forcing out smarting words he never thought he would hear himself say. "And Hannah, she's not a consolation prize." He swallowed hard. "I love her." Looking over at Brennan, Booth felt a fracture ripple through his heart when he saw her break down, sobbing more openly, making herself more vulnerable to him than she ever had before. Her chin fell to her chest and tears streamed over her features. He softened his voice further still. "The last thing I wanna do is hurt you," he admitted honestly, speaking the words that screamed the loudest inside of him, "but those are the facts."_

_ A beat passed and Brennan appeared to compose herself, raising her chin and blinking back more tears as a stalwart expression hijacked her broken features, forcing them back together. "I understand," she intoned valiantly, but her voice was still pinched. "I missed my chance." _

Reflecting on all of this – a lifetime of missed chances – Brennan could see no reason not to grab hold of this one by the horns, ride out a dicey storm of fortune, endeavour to never let go, no matter the blows they would take. She was ready now. Ready to throw herself off the cliff, take a chance, _live_. She knew now that she was strong enough. Her imperviousness was gone. She could face the gamble. Even if it went bust, at least she would know they'd tried. At least she would be able to carry on with no regrets, but there was a guardedness in Booth's eyes that held her back, that seemed to be warning her to stay at a safe distance, where she wouldn't get hurt, in spite of the words that were coming out of his mouth.

"But?" She prompted when he failed to go on, and at the same time failed to fully retreat.

For the first time since he'd instigated the conversation, Booth let his eyes fall. "It's just…" he heaved a frustrated sigh, forced his gaze back up to her. "Bones, I'm not a gambler anymore." His voice was so open, so frank, that it forced Brennan to stop and consider his words seriously, as she could clearly see he was bearing his soul. She supposed she could understand that. It only made sense that after everything that had happened, after the amount of personal torment he'd suffered, the last thing he would want to do would be to take more risks. After miraculously dodging that bullet – figuratively speaking - the last thing he would be willing to chance was someone else getting hurt…again. Fortunately she was in a less skewed state of mind. Her thoughts were unclouded by painkillers and grief. For the first time in a long time, she was thinking clearly.

"That's okay," she told him gently after a moment, voice softening to soothing tones as she placed the bedding she was holding aside on an end table in the hall, putting one of her freed hands to use on the side of his face. "I am." She watched as something melted behind his eyes – principle, maybe.

Already their gazes were engaged, passionately intertwined so it seemed like the most natural thing in the world when Booth leaned closer, the end of his nose touching hers when he whispered two words in response; "Prove it."

As she'd done on so many occasions before, Brennan accepted the challenge. Electricity exploded across her skin. She felt the surge of her insides being rendered weightless as her body steeled itself and took the plunge. Fear gripped her heart, but it was a good fear. A healthy fear. One that dared her to overthrow it. In one smooth motion, Brennan slipped the hand that was resting lightly against Booth's cheek down to the nape of his neck, drawing him down the last inch or so to her. He came willingly, crossing the distance of his own accord until, all too suddenly, he felt his lips moving against hers. He closed his eyes, letting go of whatever conviction he still had. His arms found their way around her back, hers around his neck, pulling her body against him. All at once Brennan felt the spark of life inside her, something she hadn't experienced in a painstakingly long time, if ever before. Her body radiated certainty like an electric current, pulling him closer still as though she were trying to climb right into him, wrapping herself around him.

Feeling the contours of her body mould to his, a seamless fit, it struck Booth that this wasn't like any other kiss they had shared before. It wasn't faltering and complex, thorny with the uneasiness of failure. It was straight-forward as the sunrise, heading in one direction only, irreversible. This was no game of chicken. He could tell by the way Brennan's mouth was opening to him, his tongue moving of its own hungry accord, that neither of them were backing down this time. Something erupted in his chest that he had never expected to feel again, an explosion of relief of some kind that warmed him from the inside out, like stepping off a plane into a tropical paradise after enduring the harsh winter climate of home for too long. It took him a moment to realize what that sensation was exactly: happiness.

Her hands slid from around his head to the bridge of his shoulders, crossing the hard plane of his chest south to his abdominals, and then around to his back. Feeling her lips tighten over her teeth in the bright expanse of smile, Booth let her break away for the most fleeting of moments, just long enough for their foreheads to rest together and her to whisper on a bit of a winded breath, "Besides," she swallowed, "this isn't a gamble."

The skin of his brow moved against hers as he nodded, feeling a smooth, white likeness to a Neutrogena commercial. One of his hands came up to sweep a veil of her dark brown hair, tresses like silk, behind her ear. "That I believe," he panted, letting the fever take over again as his hand pulled her face back to his. She threw herself into it for all she was worth, pressing her lips against his with an intensity that he couldn't help but harmonize with. He felt as though life was taking off without him, threatening to leave him in the dust, and he had to hurry to catch up; yesterday he'd thought he'd watched his future stumble out of his reach forever; today, he was the luckiest man in the world – how many men could honestly say they'd held a miracle in their arms? A miracle he never wanted to let go of. Ever.

When he opened his eyes, although his vision was bleary and patched from the blood rushing around inside of him, he was still able to take note of the fact that at some point they had shifted several feet down the hall toward his bedroom. His pulse quickened. Recalling his hands on her waist, he managed to summon enough strength to put half and arm's length of distance between her hips and his, their lips trailing behind a bit in the separation. "How –" he gasped as air flooded his lungs again. "How much can your heart handle?"

Brennan's answering smile was admirably composed, her eyes already resigned as she looked back at him. "It can withstand a speeding bullet," she shrugged speculatively. "I figure you should be no problem."

He looked at her for a moment, gauging her sobriety, and then his lips were on hers again, a burning intent behind his movements as his body charmed hers toward the bedroom door. She rode on his wings, let her best friend carry her while she felt his hands trace the lines of her back, hers exploring corners of him she never thought she'd be able to. Under his shirt, she felt the heat of his skin, her palms spanning the breadth of his ribcage. It was the most surreal feeling – almost like flying. She felt light-headed _and _light-hearted, as though she could float away. This wasn't happening…but it was. The two of them were a mess of drugged, unshaven, sleep-deprived, bullet-perforated exhaustion, but all at once none of that mattered. They had never been more ready to feel something, to have an experience of a lifetime, than right at this moment.

They made it to the bedroom, though it was unclear exactly who was pushing and who was pulling who. Before she was even fully aware of what she was doing, Booth's T-shirt came off in Brennan's hands, their lips unlocking just long enough for her to pull it over his head. Her hands went immediately to his chest, roving over the perfect muscle definition. She felt the warmth of his palms slip under the brim of her blouse and brush the skin of her stomach, goosebumps erupting in their wake as they trailed around her sides to the small of her back, then back around to her front. His thumb stumbled across that little ripple in her skin where her knife scar was, fingering it in what she thought was an almost loving manner while her lips grazed the roughness of his stubble, relishing the textural contrast. Her tongue traced the outline of his lips, tasting the sweetness of him.

Another lost lurch in time and she was on her back, Booth helping her back-crawl on the mattress until her head hit the pillow, their lips never missing a beat. He held himself over her, poising his weight carefully so as not to put any strain on her delicate frame. Wrapping her arms once again around his neck, she studiously avoided the patch on his shoulder covered by a square of soiled gauze – the spot where her bullet had torn through him. Her blood was singing, her head swimming, filled by him in every conceivable way – the honey of his voice, the tenderness of his touch, the taste of his breath. It took her several tries before her mind was finally able to wrap itself around the concept that this wasn't like any other night of her life; she was with _Booth_. Suddenly, despite years of rather audacious sexual exploits, she felt like a virgin again. It was like she was starting all over, from scratch, and she had no idea what to do. Booth wasn't like anyone else, and all at once she experienced the overwhelming inclination to let him take the lead for once, completely.

He hovered mere inches over her, like mist over water, until finally his fingers found the brim of her shirt, and he lifted, ever so tentatively. Reaching down across her stomach, she helped him slip it over her head, impatient to be as exposed as he was. She saw his gaze hesitate for the briefest of moments as his lips fell back onto hers, her palm going to the curve of his neck. She wasn't wearing a bra, as he'd been expecting; instead her upper torso was encased in a skin-tight, methodically-wrapped corset of flesh-coloured bandages that spanned the length of her ribcage from under her arms down to her diaphragm. While he was distracted, she moved to unfasten the butterfly clips that were holding the seams.

"Bones." His voice was arresting as he pulled back just enough to look her in the face, his eyes finding hers and drilling into them disapprovingly the way they had when they'd fallen upon her scar for the first time.

She disarmed him with a charming smile. "It's okay, Booth," she laughed softly, finding herself half-disappointed, half-relieved for the brief respite to catch her breath. "They're healing." Without waiting to give him the chance to argue further, she undid the clips and unravelled the bandages, craning her upper body up off the mattress enough to gather them in looped bunches between her hands like someone rolling up a garden hose. He was about to say something to dispute this, but as Brennan leaned forward to unwrap herself her ear strayed tantalizingly close to his mouth, and he tenderly kissed the little hollow beneath it where her jawline started. She felt a tingle raise the nerve endings on her neck. Laying back down, she tossed the bandages aside and let his lips rove from under her chin, down to her collarbone, leaving a trail of kisses all the way to a spot on her chest where the edge of a bra cup would have been, directly over one of her broken ribs. His lips touched it with such prudence, such lightness, the landing could have belonged to that of a butterfly. She didn't feel so much as a breath of pain.

Gently supporting her in his arms, Booth lowered himself onto her, pressing her delicately into the mattress while his hands explored the soft valleys of her back. She was falling into a haze, only vaguely aware as the rest of their clothes came off under the covers. Her arms locked around his shoulders, she held him close to her, savouring the feeling of him all around her. His fingers trailed the length of her spine, and paused when they happened upon a perfectly round crust of some kind on her upper back, between her shoulder blades. It stood out from the satin-like smoothness of the rest of her skin, and it took him a moment to figure out what it was. When he did, she felt his lips harden on hers, freezing for the briefest of moments before they pulled away, his fingers still on the fresh scab of the bullet hole.

She gauged the guardedness in his eyes, her internal meter getting a dangerous read on uncertainty. She tried again to placate him with a soft smile, her eyes good-natured. "We're a matching set," she remarked, in hopes of dulling the sudden edge in his countenance. When his eyes failed to relax at all into her nonchalance, she tried a different tack. "Don't stop," she whispered, her expression sobering as her grip moved from the backs of his shoulders to his upper arms, tightening around his biceps.

For too long a moment he continued to stare at her, caught on the fence. This was something he'd wanted more, and for longer, than he had anything else in his entire life. This was the thing he'd been living for, and the thing he'd been willing to die for, and yet now he wasn't sure he'd be able to bring himself to do it. That bullet had almost been the thing that finally separated her from him forever. Her light had almost gone out, and he wasn't able to stop it. If it weren't for him she never would have been in its path in the first place, and, he thought, she was still fragile; if he killed her now that would just be the definition of tragic irony.

His eyes drank in the flawlessness of her face, the new-found serenity behind eyes that looked sometimes blue and sometimes green depending upon the light - he'd always thought her eyes were brilliant that way. He looked at the cheekbones and the clear white jawline and the brilliant smile, positively glowing with ecstacy. There wasn't a part of her that he didn't consider perfect, and for him to destroy even the smallest piece of that... "How can I -?" He murmured in a tender voice barely above a whisper, gaze adoring as it roamed over her.

She stopped him with two soothing fingertips to his lips. "You're my best friend," she whispered. "I trust you unreservedly..." she hesitated, catching her breath, and then, gathering boldness, "do you love me?"

At these words she watched his eyes turn to liquid, his features finally softening in that way she'd been hoping for as he expelled a slow, disbelieving breath. He had to work to accept the impossible-seeming reality that he was here with her, that it was _she _he'd just heard ask that question. He thought of his own words a year ago; _"You know when you talk to older couples who, you know, have been in love for thirty or forty or fifty years, alright? It's always the guy who says I knew; I knew. Right from the beginning."_ "Temperence Brennan," he breathed in response, fondness massaging his tone so the tention slackened out of it, his voice like velvet as it caressed her name. "It has always been you."

A slow, bright smile unravelled across her features as he lowered himself closer to her. "Please," she beseeched him in a good-humoured whisper, her smile turning jesting as it stretched toward her eyes. "Call me Bones."

He grinned back at her for half a beat, and then covered her smile with his own, kissing her with a combination of such ferocity and tenderness that it turned her insides molten. She squared herself underneath of him, her legs moving to either side of his waist seemingly of their own accord. Her memory brought her back to a conversation they'd once had about sex, particularly the fetishistic, role-playing kind; _"How do you know it's crappy?" She demanded of him from across the diner table. "Gotta be, Bones," he replied ardently. "C'mon, it's gotta be." She eyed him a bit distainfully. "Why?" "Why?" He parroted. "I'll tell you why;" and he leaned forward, eblows on the table, "here we are, all of us, alone, basically separate creatures just circling each other. All searching for the slightest hint of a real connection. Some look in the wrong places. Some, they just give up hope because in their mind they're thinking 'Oh, there's nobody out there for me.' But all of us, we keep trying over and over again. Why? Because every once in a while, every once in a while...two people meet and there's that spark. And yes, Bones, he's handsome and she's beautiful and maybe that's all they see at first. But making love? _Making love_ - that's when two people become one." She'd been listening, but her brain didn't like the signals it was getting from her heart. "It's scientifically impossible for two objects to occupy the same space," she reasoned, to douse the heat that was stealing into her system, sending a shudder up the length of her spine. Booth didn't seem to notice. "Yeah but what's important is we try," he contested. "And when we do it right, we get close." "To what?" She wanted to know. "Breaking the laws of physics?" He nodded. "Yeah, Bones. A miracle."_

Only now, she realized, did she truly understand what he'd meant; as his lips fell from hers into the hollow of her throat, showering her neck with affection, she let her head tilt back, closing her eyes as they moved together, perfectly in sync, and for _once_, their timing was perfect.

**Authors Note: *Big sigh* Wow that was hard to write. *Sheepish, nervous grin* Feedback?**


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16: Now What?**

Booth's first thought upon awakening was a sad one: that he had been forced to leave one of the best dreams he had ever – and probably _would _ever – have. It was better, even, than his coma dream of two years ago. He'd dreamt Brennan was still alive, that she'd rescued him from the brink of suicide and then they'd spent the night together. In a way he was almost more disappointed about the suicide part of it not being real than the rest…it was certainly an idea well worth considering. Then he started to wake up more, came into full consciousness. His brain registered the butterfly pressure on his chest, and he opened his eyes to a mop of silky, dark brown, almost-black hair under his chin.

She was still fast asleep, bare, alabaster shoulders rising and falling on the steady tide of her breathing as she lay splayed, face-down across Booth's chest, her cheek resting against his breastbone, her palm open over the ugly lesion where she'd shot him…could it have only been twenty-four hours ago? The gauze patch had come off some time during the night…he couldn't recall exactly, but he was inclined to think she'd removed it.

Morning sun was blazing in through his bedroom window, already stretching long fingers across the hardwood floor to the bed, where the light seared itself into Booth's brain, and he had to squeeze his eyes tightly shut until they had a chance to adjust. When they did, he turned his gaze to the clock on the nightstand next to his bed. It was late. He realized, with the minutest sigh of satisfaction, that they'd been asleep for nearly fourteen hours. This only piled itself onto the mountain of reasons he had now to feel better than he could remember feeling in too long. The window had been left open; there was a briskness to the air this morning. He could feel the heat of Brennan's skin against his, warming him all the way down to his feet, her body wrapped around his like climbing ivy, embracing even in her sleep. Her back gleamed white in the sun; one of his arms was draped across it, holding her to him. For the longest of moments he lay there, savouring a feeling of intimacy like he had never known, moving his fingers gingerly, ever so slowly so as not to wake her, tracing the lines of her ribcage up her shoulder blades to the nape of her neck under her hair. He relished the soft ocean waves of her breathing, the warmth of life radiating from her body, and couldn't help but consider how radically his life had turned around in such an unfathomably short period of time. She felt to him like…_home_.

Painstakingly gently, as though he were handling spun sugar, he lifted her shoulders away from him just enough to slip out from under her, lowering her lightly back onto the pillow the moment his feet hit the floor. The movement dislodged from her one imperceptible syllable – the half-whispered remnants of a dream, he suspected – before she curled up on her side and nuzzled her face deeper into the fabric of the pillow, going still again so her breathing could resume its natural autopilot rhythm.

Booth permitted himself a diminutive half-smile and the subtlest of lingering looks before he turned, pulled on a pair of boxer shorts and made his way toward the kitchen. There he set to work making a pot of coffee and readying two mugs, his heart alight. It took him several minutes to realize he was smiling without even being aware of it. Still, there didn't seem to be anything he could do about it. Having no desire to cut Brennan's sleep a minute shorter than it had to be, he waited in the kitchen for the pot to fill, then poured a healthy amount of fresh brew into each mug and dressed them accordingly. He loved that he already knew how she liked her coffee, and fixed it for her almost without thinking. It seemed…ceremonious, somehow, despite the fact that he'd done it before more times than he could possibly count.

When he returned to the bedroom the bed was empty and he could hear the shower running, steam bleeding out from the crack in the partly-ajar bathroom door. He took this as an invitation. Placing the steaming mugs down on the nightstand and figuring they could warm them up later if they had to, Booth stole silently into the bathroom. Competing with the steady hiss of running water, slightly muffled as it resonated with a subtle echo off the ceramic, was the most melodious, most precious voice he thought he had ever heard; surprisingly exquisite as it had been back when he'd first heard it belting out _Girls Just Wanna Have Fun _on a karaoke stage, it was now softly intoning a somewhat timid rendition of _Keep on Tryin' _by Poco. Again not wanting to disturb her, Booth listened quietly while he opened the mirror cupboard over the sink to procure a razor and some shaving cream, that little cloud-nine grin still hijacking his features as he wet his face and went to work to the most beautiful music he could ever ask for. "…_So I'll keep on tryin', I'm through with lyin', just like the sun above, I'll come shinin' through, oh, yes, I'll keep on tryin', I'm tired of cryin', I got to find a way, to get on home to you…."_

By the fourth verse it became too much for Booth to resist. Laying down the razor on the side of the sink, Booth rinsed and towelled his face clean, and then in one hasty motion pulled his boxers back off and ducked in behind the shower curtain just as Brennan was starting into a new line. He saw her eyes widen in surprise at the same moment that a delighted smile brightened her features, but she didn't stop singing as Booth opened his own vocal chords and picked up the lines with her; _"I've been thinkin' 'bout, all the times you held me, I never heard you shout, the flow of energy was so fine, now I think I'll lay it on the line, and keep on tryin', to get home to you." _As they towed the song along together to its close, Brennan tilting her head back to finish rinsing conditioner out of her hair, Booth inched closer to her until finally, after the final refrain, their lips found each other. Water streamed over Booth's forehead and closed eyelids, dousing his hair. Brennan's lips parted and between them Booth could taste the remnants of his own _Citrus Splash _toothpaste. After a moment he felt them curve up at the edges into a smile, and he broke away, tantalizingly slowly, their faces remaining close together.

Tenderly, Brennan raised one hand and trailed the shrivelled, saturated ends of her fingertips over the satin smoothness of Booth's jawline, her eyes feasting appreciatively on the way the fresh shave made him look – and feel – more like himself again. He noted the satisfaction in her gaze, and contented himself with the certainty of her restored trust, despite how completely off his rocker he'd gone the day before. "Hi," he breathed, voice as velvety smooth as his wet skin as he locked onto her gaze, watched as her cerulean eyes melted into his chocolate ones.

She beamed. "Good morning."

Neither of them spoke again until they were dried off and getting dressed outside in Booth's bedroom, engaged in something of a scavenger hunt to recover articles of clothing from indiscriminate corners of the room. Brennan was standing by the nightstand, strands of hair – still wet from the shower – straying from the tight bun she'd combed it into at the back of her head as she held her chin to her chest and struggled to sufficiently rewrap her own ribs. Booth watched her wrestle with the several yards of bandages for a moment before he offered to step in. "You need some help with that?" He asked, one corner of his mouth lifting in an amused half-smirk. Without waiting for what was almost certain to be a snide retort, he crossed the room in a clean pair of suit pants and a white collared shirt that he had yet to button up and batted her fingers dismissively away from the bandages, taking them from her and squaring himself behind her to do them up. She lifted her arms cooperatively, her eyes drifting a bit abashedly to the ceiling as his hands circled her body, bringing his chest close to her back as he passed the dressings around her torso.

"How are you feeling?" His low, downy voice sent a pleasurable quiver up her spine as it inquired close to her ear, and she felt the kiss of his breath on the side of her neck. She could smell his aftershave – he didn't wear cologne; he'd always claimed it smelled like perfume. "Anything sore?"

Brennan took a moment to answer. "Mmm." She flexed her shoulders, testing the dexterity of her ribcage. "Just a little," she replied truthfully. "You?"

When he answered his voice was like honey. "Just a little," he parroted. He finished securing the bandages at her sides, fingers so gentle the only way she knew he was done was by the subtle click the butterfly clips made as he fixed them in place. "But," he added on the breath of a contented sigh, spinning her around to face him, "it was totally worth it." His eyes levelled with hers and he let his hands linger on the bridge of her shoulders for a minute, prompting a concurrent smile from her.

"I agree," she laughed softly, with an allusive raise of her dark eyebrows. "Last night was…" she let her voice trail off implyingly, her eyes straying down the length of Booth's exposed chest, ripples expanding in her gut.

"I know." A grin bloomed across Booth's features in concordance and she expected him to finish the statement with something like 'a dream' or 'ground-breaking', but instead he responded with a synonymous, "Somewhere Sweets' head exploded," prompting from her an appreciative laugh. Heat blossomed in her ribcage, threatening a sear, and she sobered.

She watched for a moment, unseeing, as Booth bent his chin and proceeded to fasten the buttons on his shirt from the bottom up, recollections of the night before parading across her mind's eye to a marching band crescendo. "Are you always that…careful, with women?" She questioned after a moment out of sheer curiosity, remembering the way he had handled her – passionate, yes, definitely passionate, but so tenderly, touching her as though she were made of light – the way his hands had only gone places a really good friend would allow; her back, her sides, her abdomen, her neck, her face, her hair, the way wherever he kissed her, his lips hovered for an instant over her skin, as though undecided whether that part of her was meant for him. Brennan had never in her sexually mature life regarded the act as something that could be done respectfully, or even something that was _meant _to be done respectfully, but she had to admit, last night Booth had altered her entire view of lovemaking forever.

"No," Booth answered promptly, his voice frank as he finished buttoning his collar and raised his eyes to look at her. When they found hers his resolve seemed to wane. "Not always," he shrugged his broad shoulders, looking down again under the pretence of buckling his belt, "but, you know…" several shrugs in a considerably fewer amount of syllables while he avoided her gaze. Then he forced himself to make eye contact again, expelling a sharp sigh. "It's you," he breathed, voice lowering in that tender way it always did when he was deep in thought.

Several seconds of silence ensued during which mounted an awkwardness that seemed to displace the air in the entire room; the mastodon in the room. Brennan found herself thinking of the time the two of them had been trapped in a service elevator together during a blizzard blackout a mere six months ago, just before Booth had left for Israel. The extended period of time alone together – discounting, of course, the intermittent presence of Sweets – had ultimately resulted in the two of them having the single cornerstone conversation the past six years had been culminating towards; she'd postulated that, given both of their stamina, "making love would be quite satisfying." _Well if that wasn't the understatement of the millennia, _she mused a bit wryly to herself now. But then Booth had responded with a characteristically tentative, "yeah…but then what?" The tone was a practical one, but almost sounded disappointed, Brennan had thought at the time. _"I mean as a couple you and me would never..." _his voice had trailed off, reluctant to hurt her feelings. _"No_," she'd agreed quickly. _"It would never work." _Now, she realized, they may have had a point. Now what? Where did they go from here?

"This…" Brennan began again after a too-long moment, faltering voice severing the silence, "isn't going to change anything between us, is it?" She looked up at Booth hopefully, reminiscences of their partnership playing across her eyes like a movie screen. Her brow furrowed in obvious concern.

A knowing smile softened Booth's features. "Ah, Bones," he sighed, taking a step closer to her so his chin could have touched her forehead if he hadn't been looking down into her face, "of course it is."

Brennan's mind back-reeled and she did a double-take, convinced she had heard wrong. When she realized she hadn't, she blinked, taken aback, and the lines in her forehead deepened. Booth's grin only broadened. "_Everything_," he ploughed on before she could enter a work of discontentment on the matter, "is about to change. And you know what I say to that?" His voice dropped to a whisper and he inched his lips closer to hers, until the tips of their noses were touching. "It's about God-damned time." He crossed the miniscule distance to her face, caressing her lips with a leisurely tenderness that prompted her to sink into him, the urgency and hunger of the night before replaced by sheer contentment and adoration. At their waists, Brennan laced her fingers through his, taking his hand in a way that better conveyed her agreement than she would ever be able to articulate. _He's back_, she thought blissfully to herself. _My gambler's back. _

Brennan's head was swimming by the time they broke apart, Booth leaving her breathless as he turned and crossed the room to procure a rather loudly-coloured tie from a rack on the inside of his open closet door. "So what do you say?" He asked, turning back and squaring himself in front of the mirror as he looped the tie around his neck. "You ready to go to work?"

At this proposition, Brennan managed to regain her breath, a relieved smile hijacking her features at the thought of finally returning to some form of normal routine. "Yes!" She answered fervently, the excitement in her voice prompting a reflective smile from Booth, even though he didn't look at her. She watched him struggle with the tie for a moment, shaky fingers fumbling to get the tails through the knot as the painkillers from over half a day ago began to lose their effect. Hitching one corner of her mouth up in a smug half-grin, Brennan folded both arms across her freshly-bandaged chest. "You need some help with that?" ***

"Bones," Booth extracted an MP3 player excitedly from his pants pocket and plugged it into the dashboard of her car with a line output jack while he drove, "check it out; I found us a new song."

Brennan, confined to the passenger's seat per his insistence, eyed him a bit perplexedly. "What? What happened to _Hot Blooded_?" She wanted to know, brows knit a bit disconcertedly.

"Aw, you know," Booth wagged his head in an apathetic salute as he alternated looking from the road to the device's screen, shuffling for the right track, "_Hot Blooded_, it's a classic, but I gotta say it's a little bit…tainted for me now, sooo…" he let his voice trail off as his thumb punched in the play button and he dropped the player into one of the cup holders in the center console, waiting a bit too animatedly for Brennan's liking for the song to begin.

"_Shot through the heart, and you're to blame. Darlin' you give love a bad name…" _The rock-and-roll, staccato shrills of Bon Jovi blasted into the front seat, and Brennan levelled Booth with a witheringly cool, dubious leer. "What?" He demanded, enthusiasm dissolving a bit as he caught sight of the sidelong look she was giving him. "It's a great song."

"And _this _isn't tainted for you?" She challenged, having to shout over the music as she waved a fervid palm at the dashboard. Even as she questioned him, an amused smile was playing at the corners of her mouth.

"Nah," Booth contested, hitching one shoulder in a cavalier shrug. "C'mon, it's funny. Now," he added hastily when her eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hairline in another scandalized look. "It's funny _now_." He waited for a long moment, his smile hesitant as he gauged her for a reaction, sincerely hoping this wasn't one of those things only men would find comical, and women simply morbid. And then an indulgent smile split Brennan's features and she started to laugh. _Of course, _Booth thought inwardly with a cooling splash of relief, _it's Bones. _She wasn't like other women. If anyone could appreciate a respectably morbid joke, she could. The first verse drew to a close and, as though eternally set to the same wavelength, they both parted their lips wide and started to sing, a boisterous, unabashed, hearty belt that sent both their spirits soaring; _"OH! You're a loaded gun…yeah. OH! There's nowhere to run. No one can save me, the damage is done! Shot through the heart, and you're to blame. You give love a bad name. I play my part, and you play your game. You give love a bad name. You give love…a bad name…." _***

Cam was staring down the clock on the lab wall, something she seemed to be doing a lot of these days. The mini television was blaring in the background, but so far the most noteworthy news break of the day had been a harbour seal giving birth to triplets at the National Zoo. Instances of crime and corruption, it seemed, were at a standstill for the moment; the city was at peace, which was more than Cam could say for herself. "She's _really _late," she proclaimed for what had to have been the thousandth time, prompting a chorus of wearied groans from the congregation behind her on the platform – since they only had one case in the window, and currently that case was dead-ended, at least until Brennan could return to help solve it, as she'd promised she would the day before, all of Angela, Hodgins and Fisher were piled onto one of the vacant cadaver tables in the room, ankles swinging idly above the ground while they awaited her arrival. "I don't think she's ever been this late in the entire five years we've been working together," Cam pressed, craning to look at the rest of the group over her shoulder.

"Give her a break," Hodgins intoned ardently from his spot on the table next to Angela. "She's probably exhausted. Not to mention, oh yeah, she has a _hole in her aorta_." He eyed Cam a bit disparagingly. "I'm surprised she agreed to come into work at all."

"This is Brennan we're talking about," Angela interjected before Cam could bite back with a retort in her own defense. "As long as she's breathing and walking, she's working." She mediated between Cam and Hodgins with a level gaze. Then her brows tilted outward in concern and the practicality in her voice crumbled. "What if something happened?" She mused out loud to no one and everyone, voice wound suddenly tight with unease. "Do you suppose Booth's alright? What if after she left him –"

"_If _she left him," Hodgins modified with a sly, somewhat puckish smile.

Angela rounded on him and her tone solidified again. "What, you think she spent the night?" She inferred, shooting him a dubious eyebrow-raise. Hodgins had that Cheshire-cat grin on his face that always meant he knew something. Angela elbowed him stiffly in the ribs. "Spill it, Jack."

Hodgins coughed once, subtly winded by the blow, but otherwise the glee in his countenance didn't dissipate. "I called Brennan's apartment this morning to see what time she was coming in," he divulged, leaning forward on the table and lowering his voice as though he were disclosing to them the location of Area 51. He let the inference dangle, and shook his head slowly, implying heavy significance. "No answer."

At this, however, Angela merely threw both hands in the air and hopped down off the table with an exasperated roll of her sable eyes. "Oh, that makes me feel _lots _better," she retorted, sarcasm detonating from her voice as she commenced pacing.

At that moment the hiss of the entrance doors sliding open caused all of them to swivel their heads in one unanimous motion; Cam turned all the way around from her spot facing the clock on the wall. They waited expectantly while footsteps approached the platform, the angle of the railing such that they couldn't see the newcomer until he was right at the foot of the stairs. "Oh," Angela's shoulders sagged a bit disappointedly as her gaze landed on a lanky, dark-haired figure with its hands buried in the pockets of its suit pants and its spine stooped despondently, "hey, Sweets." Noting the forest of shadows over his features and the way his mouth was set in what seemed like a perpetual moroseness, Angela quickly rearranged her features to be noticeably brighter. "You can just go ahead and set up in my office; I'll be there in a minute."

Sweets blinked back at them, expression unchanged, then raised one hand a bit languidly out of his pants pocket to salute them all in what was the definition of an unenthusiastic manner. "I'll be there," he grumbled flatly, and turned on one heel to stroll at a pace that should have been reserved for retirees with nowhere of particular import to get to, down the hall toward Angela's office. They watched him go, and Angela realized it was the first time they'd seen him at all since Brennan's funeral. She felt a lance of conscience at the subsequent realization that she'd probably been his first house-call (or, in this case, office-call) since he'd gone on leave.

"Wow," Cam remarked once Sweets was out of earshot, appraising Angela with something of an impressed expression. "So you were really serious about that therapy thing?"

Turning back to Cam, Angela rolled her eyes a second, sardonic time and threw her head back in a mirthless laugh. "Please, are you kidding?" She replied, sobering abruptly. "I think on the scale of personal trauma one person can suffer over the course of a week my grand tally would be…" she pretended to think, "through the roof." She smiled in a detached, maniacal way that put Hodgins on edge as she reached into the pocket of her lab coat. "Man, I am going to be _so _screwed up after that…" as she said it she produced from her pocket the .367 she'd picked up off the lawn of the FBI building after Brennan had tossed it, generating a surge of alarm throughout the lab as she raised her arm and twirled it nonchalantly around her index finger from the trigger guard, perpetuating her dispassionate smile as she did so.

"Whoa, Angie!" Hodgins made a dive for the gun, wrestling it from his wife with minimal difficulty as she relinquished it without protest and regarded him with an unruffled expression that was even a little amused. Cam and Fisher were both staring cagily at her as though she were a loose cannon who should have been confined to a straitjacket.

"Hello, everyone!" A jovial, almost sing-song voice from the foyer caused them all to turn a second time – gears all banded to the same track. So preoccupied were they that, despite the hours of impatience they'd been forced to endure thus far, they hadn't even heard the doors open this time. Brennan's tall, slender frame appeared at the foot of the platform steps, Booth shadowing her like a guardian angel over one shoulder. "I'm sorry I'm late, Cam." She offered up a surreptitious half-smile. "Long night."

Angela made a diligent mental note, and exchanged glances with Hodgins, but Cam's gaze had zeroed in _Terminator_- style on Booth. "What are you doing here?" She demanded, features crinkling in that affronted manner that always served to inform her employees when they were in trouble.

Booth thought hard about his response before he vocalized it. "Well…" he answered slowly, pretending to extract a fair amount of brain power, "Bones was coming into work and…I work with Bones; Bones and I are partners; we work in the same place doing the same thing, ergo ipso facto Columbo Oreo: I'm with Bones…working."

Brennan was the only one who looked impressed with this explanation; everyone else simply blinked back at Booth as though he were spewing a Martian dialect. "Okay…" Cam replied at an equally sluggish pace, working to re-establish her practicedly efficient uptake time (one had to be dexterous at keeping up when managing a group of the combined IQ calibre of the Jeffersonian forensics team). "As bizarrely academic as _that _was…you haven't been cleared yet by the Bureau to return to work."

Booth, looking only mildly thwarted, thought for another moment. "Well, then," he craftily altered tactics, "I'm here…on an unofficial visit to this fine institution as a friend and assistant to the lovely Dr. Brennan, here." Booth laid a hand on the bridge of her shoulder and she raised one hand under the pretence of scratching her nose to stifle a smile. "I'll just," he shrugged, "tag along with Bones for the day and offer verbal assistance where necessary."

There was a beat of silence while Booth and Brennan waited with baited breath and Cam seemed to be trying to decide whether she was indignant or amused. Finally, her piercing gaze darted to Brennan. "Is he still on Vicodin?" She wanted to know, pointing an indicative finger at Booth.

Brennan's response was prompt and even. "I'll watch him like a hawk, I promise," she assured her, and Cam thought for another moment.

She closed her eyes, supressing the long-suffering groan that swelled in her at the (also practiced) denial of her professional instincts. "Alright," she sighed heavily, happily hiking the weight of the world onto her shoulders – with the team split up, they had almost been too free of burden. "Let's get started people. Dr. Brennan," she turned back to face the single occupied cadaver table and snapped on a pair of latex gloves, "the remains from that burn victim case on I-295 have been sitting here since you…uh…"

"Died?" Brennan supplemented, blunt as ever.

Cam raised her head contemplatively. "I was going to say 'left', but sure, a more direct account works fine, too." She trained her gaze down on the remains and willed herself to focus, drawing a deep, cleansing breath through her system. "Tell me what you need and we'll get to work ID-ing this crisper."

"Have the bones been cleaned and laid out anatomically?" Brennan inquired, ignoring the quip.

Hodgins regarded her with a look that was almost offended. "Do we look like we started doing this yesterday?" He deflected the question, and Brennan nodded once in rescinding comprehension.

"Let me just go and get reorganized in my office and then I'll be back out to help," she disclosed, gesturing down the hall to where she knew her work space had been waiting for her, vacant, for several days. She just hoped everything was as she'd left it….

"I'll go with you!" Booth volunteered with a hair too much enthusiasm as she turned and he bounded after her, practically stepping on her heels.

Again, Hodgins and Angela brushed communicative gazes. "So will we!" They sprang to follow, leaving Cam to turn on her heels to find the platform empty, devoid of all her own staff except for Fisher. The two of them caught up quickly, doing a kind of jigging half-jog to keep up with Brennan's pace. She felt like she had the Lolly Pop Guild of Munchkins on her heels. _Just follow the yellow brick road…._

"Why are you walking like that?" Angela probed in a smiling voice as she trotted along next to Booth and Hodgins.

"Like what?" Brennan parried, mentally noting the way she was carrying her shoulders on a gingerly level plane, with one arm clinched guardedly across her abdomen, and made an immediate, discreet effort to readjust.

Angela didn't miss a beat. "Like you're afraid your upper body will fall off if you let it jostle at all."

"She has three broken ribs," Booth interjected in Brennan's defense, prompting Angela to glance over one shoulder at him a bit disgruntledly.

"He's right," Brennan picked up the torch. "My range of motion is severely inhibited."

Angela looked back at her friend, expression dubious. "Yeah," she acknowledged, "but does it really still hurt that bad?"

_It does after last night_, Brennan alluded inwardly; she'd thought, upon awakening this morning that the extent of bruising resulting from the over exertion of physicality the night before would be minimal; she was a relatively fit woman, after all, and had confidence that her body would be able to bounce back with a fair amount of efficiency from whatever impediments – if any – it suffered; however as the day progressed the fire in her ribcage advanced into an inferno, and before long she found any movement, even the subtlety of breathing, to send a scorch of tenderness through her chest. _Totally worth it_, she reiterated Booth's words in her mind, remaining in adamant agreement. "I had surgery less than a week ago, Ange," she deflected tidily, "on what is arguably the most vital organ in the human body – next to the brain, of course – and have been functioning without the aid of analgesics for almost that full amount of time; it would be unusual if I didn't display at least some mild symptoms of discomfort for several weeks. Now," she picked up a new track before Angela had a chance to counter, "has everyone at the Jeffersonian been informed my death was falsified by the FBI for the purpose of catching Brodksy?"

This time Hodgins was the one who answered, forever the conspiracy fanatic. "Yes," he assured her. "An institution-wide e-mail notification was sent out yesterday to all departments, though I'm pretty sure most people got as far as the subject line and discarded it as spam…"

Angela snorted appreciatively. "_Dr. Brennan in Forensics Not Really Deceased" _was not exactly the most credible synopsis to a public revelation.

"Good." Brennan acted as though she hadn't heard Angela's outward expression of amusement, relieved merely to be on sounder subject ground. "So everyone knows."

"Yep," Hodgins confirmed confidently. "Everyone knows."

They passed Angela's office and, glancing in fleetingly, Brennan noted her former therapist bent-double in her friend's office chair, half-facing them as he craned over the contents of one of her desk drawers, probably scoping for psychiatric fodder. "Hey, Sweets," she hailed casually as she breezed by. She didn't break stride, and thought she saw the shrink glance up out of the corner of her eye just before her view of the doorway angled shut. The entire group was several paces past the open door when they heard him fall out of the chair. They all backpedalled, looking in an instant later on an unconscious Sweets spread-eagle on Angela's office floor, a goose-egg already materializing where he'd hit his forehead on the corner of the open drawer.

Crooking one arm at the elbow, Hodgins pointed at him, awareness suddenly flooding his system in a rush. "Oh yeah," he chuckled, as though a little amused by the magnitude of the oversight. ***

"Deep breaths, Sweets," Booth coached from his seat on the couch next to the psychologist as he and the rest of the team watched him hyperventilate into a paper bag twenty minutes later. Brennan sat on his other side, holding an ice pack against the plum-coloured mass on his temple. Sweets had his eyes closed for the moment – whenever he ventured to open them they seemed to automatically gravitate toward Dr. Brennan, which resulted each time in the immediate repetition of the initial anxiety attack he'd suffered upon being revived.

Brennan had him pinned under a gaze of concern. "Maybe we should call Gordon Gordon Wyatt," she suggested, glancing across Sweets to where Booth was sitting and lowering her voice as though the shrink wouldn't be able to hear her.

"Dr. Wyatt's a chef now," Booth reminded her gently. "And he's still thinks you're dead, too, might I remind you."

"Still," Brennan insisted reasonably, "I think he would be willing to adjourn chefing for something like this."

Booth cocked an unsavoury eyebrow. "'Chefing?'" He parroted, clearly unacquainted with the term.

Brennan opted to bypass the remark. "If he knew it was for Sweets…" she persisted, but at that moment Sweets lowered the paper bag, interrupting her in an alarmingly thin voice.

"No, no," he opposed airily, sounding a bit like he had just staggered across the finish line of a twenty-K marathon, "I'm fine." Even as he said it his voice cracked pubescently and he had to swallow hard before continuing. "So," he swivelled in his seat to face Brennan, willing himself not to dissolve into another fit of hysteria as his brain grappled to register her mere presence, "it was all a hoax?" He affirmed, clearly disturbed by the notion. "The funeral? Everything?"

Brennan levelled him with a business-like gaze. "The media coverage and the funeral were staged," she clarified matter-of-factly. "The shooting was real."

Sweets took a moment to digest this, still breathing like a woman in labour. "So," he managed again a few minutes later, with the aid of Brennan's hand moving in soothing circles on his back, "you were never really dead?"

Brennan stopped massaging his spine. "Oh, no, I was," she corrected bluntly. "For several seconds my heart stopped and the EMT's just managed to revive me with the use of defibrillators, but if it hadn't been for Booth –"

"Bones," Booth cut her off, floating both eyebrows toward his hairline communicatively. "I don't think he needs the details right this second," he elucidated at her questioning expression. Brennan looked back at Sweets, noted that Booth was correct; the therapist had returned the mouth of the bag to his face, and it was currently scrunching and bloating cyclically like an accordion as he breathed in his own expelled carbon dioxide in an attempt to quell the angst.

"See what happens?" Brennan pointed out with a critical shake of her chestnut head as she glanced around at Angela and Hodgins, who were both standing a few yards away in the office, watching silently with their arms crossed over their chests. "I leave you guys alone for five seconds and everyone turns into a basket case." Her gaze lingered pointedly on Angela and Booth.

"Well, Bones," Booth's mellow voice drew her attention back to him, and she saw he was shaking his head with the sweetest of smiles on his features, "you _are _the linchpin," he granted quietly, and her eyes softened almost immediately.

"Okay!" Angela's exasperated shrill severed the moment, making them all jump. "What's going on with you two? It's like you've pulled a _Freaky-Friday _and completely switched roles or something!" She sounded almost angry in her mystification; if there was one thing Brennan knew to be true about Angela it was that she fervently despised not being in the loop.

"Hey!" Suddenly Sweets was lucid again, and noticeably indignant of her appraisal. "That's my job."

Getting to his feet off the couch, Booth squared himself in front of the shrink, obstructing his view of Angela and holding out a placating hand, palm-down. "Just take it easy, Sweets," he entreated, then fished in his pocket and extracted a rattling prescription pill bottle a moment later. "Here," he said, extending it to Sweets in offering. "Have a Vicodin."

Sweets' arm stretched for the bottle but Brennan's snatch was faster. "_Don't _give him that!" She exclaimed looking scandalized as she seized the painkillers from Booth's grasp with a none-too civil wrench.

"Okay!" Booth erected both hands, palms facing her in an open surrender. The imprudence of what he said next, Brennan was sure, was a product of the several milligrams he'd already ingested earlier that morning. "_Jeez_," he blathered loosely, "you weren't this pushy in the shower this morning."

"_What!" _Sweets' voice Heimliched several octaves as his black eyes darted between Booth and Brennan in something of a deranged fashion.

"Nothing, Sweets," Booth amended quickly and coolly, fearing they might have just sent their therapist clean over the edge. "Lay down before you hurt yourself." Proffering little more than a protestant whimper, Sweets obeyed, curling into a fetal position on his side on the couch with his head in Brennan's lap. However, not everyone, it seemed, was fully satisfied with this.

"No no," Hodgins intoned breathily, eyes flitting in fascination between Booth and Brennan, Angela like a fully functioning carbon copy behind him. "Let's go back to that shower thing."

Booth rounded on him. "_You _never mind!" He commanded, directing a haughty index finger at the entomologist. Then he turned back to Brennan, his temper diminishing only marginally. "Come on, Bones," he entreated, jerking his head toward one shoulder in an indication of departure. "We've got a murder to solve."

At the drop of a hat, Brennan was all-business. "Oh, yes," she agreed with a single, methodical nod. Moving to get to her feet, she shifted Sweets carefully out of her lap, replacing it with one of the couch's decorative throw pillows under his head. Angela and Hodgins didn't even bother trying to veil their interest as Booth waited by the door, arm outstretched and expression soft, for Brennan to exit the room ahead of him, settling one hand dotingly in the middle of her back as they turned and left together.

Their friends stared after them, open-mouthed and looking a bit like they'd just been targetted with a stungun. Once he was certain they were out of earshot, Hodgins permitted the shrewd smile he'd been struggling to keep at bay to finally split his features. "They're back," he declared to Angela in a sing-song voice, gaze still fixed on the empty doorway Booth and Brennan had just departed through.

His wife furrowed her brow perceptively, but her full lips were also curved into a keen, insightful smile. "What's more," she remarked in an airy voice, sounding slightly dazed. "I think they might be...something else."

Hodgins glanced over at her. "We can only hope," he replied, honey voice tenderizing at the thought. The turned his gaze back toward the door, contemplative. "He's never going to leave her side again, is he?" He inquired of no one in particular, vocalizing his own opinion more than anything else, but Angela shook her head slowly in reponse.

"Nope," she confirmed in a quiet voice barely above a whisper, mocha eyes far away. "Never again. And all is right with the world." As if drawn on the same wavelength, both she and Hodgins glanced simultaneously back to Sweets, who was face-down on the couch, eyes closed, a river of drool pooling on the leather outside one corner of his mouth. Angela waved a dismayed hand at the shrink. "Sweets passed out again," she declared somewhat superfluously. ***

_Three days later..._

The entire building was eerily quiet as Brennan strode through the doors late in the evening, long after the Jeffersonian had closed. Crickets chanted a serenade to the tranquil, midsummer blackness outside, the mild air having put them in a zesty mood. She felt more like a visitor to the exhibits than one of the head employees as she crossed into the entrance foyer wearing not but a pair of khakis and a sleeveless grey top, bra straps visible, hair loosely twisted into a clamp at the back of her head so a few wisps remained dangling to frame her face. Given the rather unseemly hour, she assumed she wasn't here in a professional capacity, though it was impossible to say for certain - the message Booth had left her on her answering machine had been so cryptic...

She could have said no. She could have easily defaulted to the (valid) excuse that it was late, and she'd been just about to crawl into bed with her laptop to work on her latest book, but if she was being completely honest with herself, she had to admit it was curiosity that had enticed her here in the end; this was the first she'd heard from Booth all day, and yesterday, too, as a matter of fact. After that one night they'd spent together she'd presumed - along with everyone else - that their 'aloof' days with one another had long-since expired, that they would be stuck to each other like Velcro for the remainder of their partnership, but, as he so often tended to do, Booth had thrown her for a loop again. For all she knew he might as well have fallen off the face of the earth. She hadn't seen or talked to him...it was as though they'd regressed back to much earlier days in their friendship, and Brennan had to wonder if he wasn't deliberately avoiding her. She wouldn't be surprised if that were the case; Booth had made it clear, after all, that he was more than hesitant about putting what they had on the line for the prospect of a real relationship. She knew him well enough to know that he cared enough for her to not want to risk her happiness that way. Maybe he was having second thoughts, perhaps even regretting everything that had finally come to fruition between them and yearning again for their more comfortable, purely platonic dynamic. She couldn't deny there were many happy memories, countless experiences she wouldn't exchange for the world tucked into those years of friendship she and Booth had shared. She certainly wouldn't blame him if he wanted to go back to that...and she couldn't ignore the noteworthy amount of time that had passed since that night. Someone had once told her it took three days for the human brain to adjust to an inversion of perception, to right itself again once everything it had once known as reality had capsized, after everything changed. Perhaps it had just taken three days for Booth's world to turn right-side-up again.

Steeling herself for the worst, Brennan paused just inside the doors, fingers tucked into the seat pockets of her pants a bit insecurely, gaze meandering right and left between her own office and the expanse of hallway that branched into everyone else's. Booth hadn't said where he would be, or if he would be here at all, for that matter. Only that she had to be. Now.

As far as she could tell, she was alone. Everything was dark. The dim floodlights employed by the night-time security provided the only light in the establishment, casting long shadows that somehow seemed to deepen the silence of the vacant rooms. "Booth?" She called timidly into the stillness, voice sounding far too loud as it ricocheted off of the innumerable stainless steel surfaces in the building, the grey metal glinting back at her malignantly. No response.

Vaguely registering the slight quickening of her pulse, Brennan took a step toward the forensic platform - her own turf, the only ground on which she wouldn't feel vulnerable. A figure materialized out of the shadows - tall and slender and statuesque, to barricade her path. Brennan drew up short. "Angela," she breathed, eyeing her friend with an air of perceptable relief. "Have you seen Booth?"

Angela shook her head so hurriedly that it drew Brennan's attention for the first time to the taughtness of her features, that discernable, wild look in her eyes like she wanted to explode. "Nope," the word came out in a rodent-like squeak.

Disregarding the peculiarity of her friend's demeanor for the moment, Brennan merely pulled her hands from her pockets and threw them skyward with a thwarted roll of her eyes. "Great," she sighed, letting her palms fall back against her thighs in a dismayed slap. "Not a peep from him in two days and then he calls me to tell me I'm needed at work - at eleven-thirty at night, no less, and doesn't even show up himself." She paused for breath and her eyes landed back on Angela a bit circumspectly. "What are you doing here?" She wanted to know in an only slightly more tempered voice.

Angela shook her head again, the movement looking a bit robotic this time. "Nothing," she peeped in a voice that was several octaves higher than it should have been.

Brennan frowned at her. "Why are you talking like that?" She questioned, more baffled than suspicious, as these things - thankfully - tended to go right over Brennan's head. And then she noticed the way Angela was bouncing, ever so subtly, on the tips of her toes, vibrating in such a way that the movement was virtually invisible, but still discernable to someone with Brennan's eye.

"No reason." Angela cleared her throat and made a point of checking her excitement. "Maybe Booth just needed some time to...assess the situation," she posited, regrouping with admirable efficacy.

Folding her arms over her chest, Brennan nodded. "That's what I'm afraid of," she confessed absently, gaze wandering searchingly about her for the thousandth time. Then she turned her attention back to Angela, suddenly grateful for the presence of her best girlfriend and confidante. "Maybe it's for the best, though," she confided with a resigned sigh. "This whole thing has thrown my center of balance completely off-kilter; I've felt nothing but out of sorts and...edgy, for the past three days. I can't concentrate on anything, and I'm forgetting things I normally wouldn't..." Brennan's voice trailed off and one corner of her mouth hitched up in a wry grin. "Maybe I'm pregnant," she chuckled ironically.

At this, however, Angela's eyes opened so wide Brennan was afraid they might pop clean out of her skull, and the sudden flare of excited energy within her was almost palpable. "_Really_?" She shrieked in a pitch Brennan was sure bordered on ultrasonic, and the jesting smile faded from her friend's face.

"No, Ange," she negated flatly, levelling her with a contemptuous look, arms still crossed. "I was kidding."

Angela's face fell. "Oh."

Brennan was familiar enough with her own body to know if she were _that _out of sorts, even this early. She recognized her absent-mindedness as a mere consequence of the distraction of her and Booth (she'd experienced it before). "Speaking of being out of sorts, though," Brennan changed tracks, expression turning brooding again, "you haven't seen my dolphin ring, either, have you? I think I must have lost it..."

With suspicious promptness, Angela shook her head yet again, starting to look to Brennan like something like a reverse bobble-head. "No." And her voice was uncharacteristically high again. "Sorry. No idea." Then she turned and gestured to the stairs several yards in front of them, appearing mildly desperate to escape from further conversation. "Maybe you should check the lab," she recommended, a rather feeble attempt at nonchalance falling flat on its face. "You sometimes take it off when you put on gloves."

Brennan nodded, but remained glued to her spot in front of Angela, still frowning at her disconcertedly. "Ange, what's going on?" She demanded candidly after a moment, convinced now that the tight, tremulous smile her friend seemed to be wrestling with wasn't a normal one. "Why are you here, and why did Booth call me in?" Her tone was resolute that she wouldn't accept anything less than the truth, so Angela sufficed instead with an evasive manoeuvre.

"Just," she implored, closing her eyes against the detonation of fireworks inside her body, "check the lab."

Brennan gave her a shrewd once-over with her eyes and then started to turn slowly. "Fine," she grumbled, clearly discontented. "I was headed there anyway."

The minute she turned her back Angela bolted for the staircase to the second level. The clatter of her retreating heels caused Brennan to turn back briefly in disconcertment, but by the time she looked her friend had gone, leaving not but a cartoon outline of herself in dust where she'd stood. Shrugging it off, Brennan moved toward the steps to the lab platform, accounting Angela's behaviour to her slow recovery from what had come to be known infamously around the lab as "the Brodsky ordeal".

The platform was dark as she swiped herself through security and ascended onto it. She moved forward with a casual, wearied sigh, posture melancholy at best, until she reached one of the towering chrome wall supports and upset a row of switches on the electrical panel there with one hand, dousing the area in light. Then she froze, spine rigid. Her breathing caught and her eyes widened in disbelief as they were assaulted with a near-blinding blare of yellow. The lab was confettied with loudly-coloured blossoms, every surface covered, _garlanded_, with more daffodils than she had ever seen in one place in her life.

For the longest of moments it was all she could do to gape at the spread; there had to be thousands in bundles of ample bouquets. Then one word somehow managed to leach out of her knotted throat on a breath of wonderment; "Whoa."

"Horse!" A silky voice answered from behind her, and she started and turned.

"What?" She asked, the clever allusion of the joke overshooting her head in her bewilderment.

Booth smiled. "Never mind." He was dressed in a suit and tie and looking more himself than he had in what felt like a lifetime, clean-shaven with what looked like a fresh haircut, hands buried characteristically in the pockets of his black suit pants.

"Did you do all of this?" Brennan wanted to know in the airy voice of someone who'd just been bowled over by a hurricane.

At the foot of the platform, Booth shrugged his broad shoulders, expression serene. "I had a little help," he admitted smoothly, gaze straying fleetingly to the atrium bridge over their heads, where he knew they had an audience.

Brennan didn't appear to notice. "Why?" She demanded, a little substantiality returning to her tone as she knit her brows at him.

Booth drew in a breath. "Because, Bones," removing his hands from his pockets, he ascended the platform steps in three lithe bounds, crossing the floor in long, hungry strides to stand in front of her, "there's something I want you to know and I've spent the past three days trying to figure out how best to show it to you."

On the second floor, Angela reached the summit of the viaduct and sprinted down the expanse of suspension, granting her two-inch heels minimum regard as she skittered to a halt in the middle where Hodgins, Cam and Sweets were all gathered, bent at the waist with their elbows on the railing. "Did I miss anything?" She panted fervently, eyes searching down over the railing to the first floor where Booth and Brennan stood on the platform underneath them.

Hodgins shook his ginger head, extending an arm to wrap tightly around Angela's shoulders, squeezing her against his side in his excitement. "Nope," he assured her in an exultant whisper, a fanatical grin plastered to his features. "He just started talking. You're good."

Cam shushed them both.

Inside her chest, Brennan felt her heart sputter like a faulty car engine, threatening to stall completely depending on what happened next. "And what's that?" She inquired, voice barely above a whisper as she looked up at Booth through shimmering cerulean eyes that were almost frightened.

Booth's tranquil smile remained unwavering. There was a peace in his eyes that was indicative of a steady, happy heart. His gaze melted into hers and as she listened, his voice turned to honey. "That you're the best thing that ever happened to me," he informed her, tone velvety-soft. "And, concerning this thing between us, I am in. _All _in, and that I love you."

Brennan felt her breathing hitch, and her features open wider in something akin to panic, only more positive, somehow. Less grim. When she spoke her voice was frail and breathless, so thin it was barely audible. "Booth," she whispered, sounding pinched under threat of emotion, and Booth raised two fingertips to her lips.

"Just let me talk for a minute okay?" He beseeched, so gently that Brennan had no choice but to swallow her contention and nod in compliance. "Because if I don't get this out now I'll never say it." He lowered his hand from her face, and then Brennan was certain she saw his eyes tighten abit, an air of nervousness edging its way into his tone and expression. "Those four days I spent thinking you were dead, that I would never see you again," he began, pausing with a grave shake of his dark head, "they were, hands-down, the worst four days of my entire life."

Brennan nodded her comprehension, too tense to remain passive. "I know," she reminded him in a desperate attempt to hurry the conversation along. "You already said..."

"I convinced myself," Booth persisted as though she hadn't spoken at all, "that the reason I wanted to jump off that building was...because of Parker. Because I no longer knew who I was. Because I didn't serve a purpose anymore, but the truth is..." he swallowed hard and Brennan thought she saw a gloss appear over his rich eyes. His voice turned tremulous, as though it were only by exerting a great amount of effort that he managed to get the next words out, "I wasn't interested in living a life that didn't include you."

A part of Brennan wanted to stop him there, before he did himself irreparable damage, but he was staring at her with such intense adoration that she was helpless to do anything but gaze back at him silently, tears swimming into her vision, refusing to blink.

"And then," Booth began again, composed voice beginning to fragment, "the other night..." a watery smile stole onto his lips and he shook his head. Brennan understood. "I don't know about you, but I've never been with someone before where it's felt that..._right_. Like we were a perfect fit, designed for one another. Like for a few seconds, we actually became one person." He raised his eyebrows hopefully. "Did you feel that?"

Still too choked to speak, Brennan nodded. Images flashed in her mind of the night they'd slept together, and her skin crawled in the most pleasurable way imaginable. Her stomach dropped, and a shiver that had nothing to do with being cold quivered up the length of her spine. She remembered how, when it was over, she'd relaxed and he'd sunk into her, both of them expelling a great, unanimous breath as though wondering if their lungs would ever work properly again. He'd kissed her on the forehead. She remembered the way their sweat had mixed, how she had been able to feel his thunderous heartbeat against her chest, inside of her as though it were her own.

Booth moved in on her, speaking so low that only she could hear as his face inched closer to hers and his hands went to her shoulders, holding her in place. "When I look at you," he whispered, "I don't just see the beautiful woman that you are in every respect, from the inside out. I also see Bones. _My _Bones. My best friend. The woman I once threw knives at during an undercover circus assignment." Brennan's features brightened at the memory, and she managed a diminutive laugh. "The woman I once arrested and rescued from a whack job in a warehouse and watched punch out a Federal judge and travelled to the U.K. with. The woman who watched me get brain surgery and who I took a bullet for and who took a bullet for me. The woman I've stared down death with a thousand times over." He stopped for breath and shrugged minutely. "You're it for me," he told her, voice somehow softening even further, so it was virtually inaudible. "You're the dream. All I could ever want. You know me better than anyone else ever could, and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't thank God you came into my life. You've made it so much better than it would have been had I never met you, and I owe it to you a million times over, in more ways than you can possibly imagine. I don't ever want to lose you again. We're going to keep solving cases together and catching bad guys and I am going to prove to you every day that whatever you and I have on the side," he inclined his head and lay his forehead against hers, breathing in the aroma of her skin. "it's nothing short of a miracle that was meant to be. It's what the past six years have all been leading up to. It's right. It's everything we had before, only better. And I want you to be a part of that. Forever." His eyes liquified as they adhered themselves to hers and her breath hitched on the hiccough of an uncontainable sob. He watched as a single tear escaped the corner of her eye, rolling over a high, exquisitely structured cheekbone, leaving a trail of liquid crystal in its wake. Cradling the side of her face in his hand, he brushed it away gently with a tender sweep of his thumb. Her hand rose to his wrist, gripping the ulna as though it were a lifeline. "This is going to work," he murmured close to her face, voice like a gentle rumbling of thunder as it broke under the grit of determination. "We're going to make it work."

He waited, his pulse hammering out a base rhythm against his inner ear. For an instant it felt as though his entire life were suspended, hanging on her next move. He knew she had changed, but how _much_? Was it enough to willingly invest herself fully in someone else? Was it enough to make his dreams come true? "So what do you say?" He half-whispered once he somehow managed to find his voice again. "Is it a deal?"

Brennan closed her eyes for a moment, sniffing back more tears. Her insides felt like they were going to implode. When she opened her eyes to look at him, they were warmer and wetter than he had ever seen them. Beaming tremulously, she nodded one more time, a luminousness to her face that sent a thrill up his spine. "It's a deal," she choked out in a broken voice, and he pounced on her lips so readily they were still half open from the last word. They wrapped themselves around each other, her arms tightening around his neck, his encircling her back and drawing her against him so they became tangled, appendages of the same body. It seemed like an eternity before they broke apart, and when they did, it was Brennan who had the poise to speak, dropping back onto the heels of her slip-ons and grinning up at Booth as though he were suddenly all she would ever need. "So," she murmured, arms still encircling his neck, voice steadying. "What happens next?"

Booth was silent for a long moment, chocolate eyes drinking her in. Then his hand inched toward his pocket, a slow, decisive smile unravelling its way across his features, brightening them until they almost hurt to look at. It was a smile Brennan recognized. A gambler's smile.

THE END.

**Author's Note: Okay, so a bit of cheesy, fanatical fun in this chapter, but hopefully it was still enjoyable :) Epilogue still to come!**


	17. Chapter 17

**Epilogue: The Change in the Game**

_One year later…_

"Did you _ever _think this day would come?" Hodgins leaned across the white linen tablecloth to address the rest of the group, all of them seated in a circle and dressed to the nines. Angela sat opposite him in a plunging amethyst V-neck that showed off her legs, a lace lavender shawl draped across her bare shoulders while she bounced a sixteen-month-old Michael on her lap, letting him gum gobs of white chocolate Italian buttercream off her fingertips. Her chestnut foundation was still streaked from crying.

"Honestly?" She breathed as though still in a slight state of shock, shaking her dusky head in amazement while she readjusted Michael's bottom on her knee. "Never. Not Brennan. She was never the type…."

Mikey jack-knifed at the waist, stretching forward for the half-eaten plate on the edge of the table. "Cake!"

Hodgins hiked one shoulder in a permissive half-shrug and shifted his weight back in his chair. "People change," he remarked lightly, and with a philosophical raise of his ginger eyebrows.

Next to him, a hiccough emanated from behind the brim of a champagne glass. "You're not kidding," a wry voice slurred.

Cam leaned forward from her seat beside Angela. "How're you doing, there, Jared?" She questioned coolly, a mildly entertained smirk playing around the edges of her lips as the Navy Lieutenant-Commander lowered the drained champagne glass back to the table and supported his slouched weight on his elbows.

Dark eyes swimming a bit in search of the double that was the authentic Cam, Jared offered up a dizzy one-sided grin. "Just peachy," he belched.

Hodgins looked at him. "Jealous at all?" He was curious to know, smiling commiseratively at the younger Booth boy while he fingered the idle stem of his own glass on the surface of the table.

Jared thought for too long a moment and then shook his head dramatically. "Nnnooo!" He intoned in a throatily exaggerated attempt at nonchalance, his features contorting in a way that was meant to indicate he couldn't have cared less, but which served more so to raise everyone's guard against projectile vomit. "My brozzer's a lutkey…a lucky man. The lookiest…" he twisted to capture another glass of champagne off a tray of a passing waiter, and swayed precariously in his chair.

"Looks like someone's toast before the toasts," Cam chuckled, turning to look at the rest of them. Then her gaze zeroed in on Hodgins. "Whatever you do don't let him make a speech."

The entomologist shook his copper head in accordance. "Wasn't gonna," he coincided flatly, raising his glass to his lips. He swallowed, then rounded his gaze to his other side. "What about you, Sweets?" He queried. "You doin' okay?"

The shrink was bawling into a linen serviette for approximately the sixth consecutive hour in a row, the vehemence of the sobs not seeming to have abated in the least. Not that too many people who had witnessed what he had today could have blamed him, but even Angela had managed to pull herself together eventually. The guy must have been running nearly dry by this point…. "It was just," he blubbered, words muffled and barely discernable around the saturated fabric of the napkin, "_so _beautiful." He managed to raise his face, flushed and puffy, out of the serviette for the briefest of moments, long enough to look at them all through moist, bleary eyes. "They're so lucky. After everything…." His rather lame attempt at composure crumbled and he dissolved into tears again, plunging his face back in the linen.

"Jesus Murphy, kid, are you still crying?" A good-humouredly berating voice caused them all to swivel in their seats. Brennan's father was approaching the table, a tea-sized paper plate loaded with petit fours sagging in one hand. "I know it was a tear-jerker but you've got to buck up and display a little virility at some point. Here, have a cream puff swan."

Managing to curb his sobs to short, hitched breaths, Sweets looked up out of his napkin again. "What do you want, Max?" He demanded brokenly, ignoring the offering. "I'm not made of stone!"

Max floated two gray-streaked eyebrows indulgently. "Well neither am I," he countered promptly, withdrawing his hand, "but fortunately I'm not prepubescent either."

Sweets stopped snivelling long enough to shoot him a withering look. Max turned his steel blue gaze to Angela.

"Angel!" He belted charismatically, employing the endearment he'd appointed to her years ago. "It's wonderful to see you again, my darling. How's the therapy going?"

Angela offered up her most winning smile. "Great!" She replied with perhaps a hair too much enthusiasm. Then she gestured to Sweets, sobering a bit. "Not from him," she clarified quickly, jerking a thumb at the blubbering psychologist. "I have virtually no fantasies about gun violence at all anymore," she pronounced proudly.

Max beamed and fired her a whole-hearted thumbs-up. "Good for you!" He exclaimed.

"Did you talk to Booth yet, Max?" Cam interjected, genuinely curious.

Max bobbed his head once in a dutiful nod. "I told him if anything ever happened to my little girl, physical or otherwise I'd punch him in the crotch again." With that he oystered the cream-filled pastry in his hand in one bite and waved a cheery goodbye to all of them. "I'll cath up wiff you layer," he slurred around a mouthful of swan, sweeping crumbs from his palms as he walked away.

The others watched him go, eyebrows inquisitively raised. "I'm not even gonna ask." Hodgins was the first to speak, proficiently translating the unanimous thought scrolling through everyone's head into words. Jared followed close in his wake.

"I kinda wanna hear that shtory!" He proclaimed, chasing the declaration with another swig of champagne. ***

"You ready for this?" Brennan breathed, sounding slightly winded as she drew to a halt in front of Booth in the hallway, expression deadly serious. Looking at her with her flushed cheeks clearly visible even under a professional make-up job, recognizing the stressed, unblinking, even slightly unhinged look in her azure eyes, Booth couldn't help but smile, half-amused, half-adoring.

"Hey," he crooned, voice disarmingly gentle as he raised one hand from the pocket of his tux to brush a stray corkscrew of hair back behind her ear, "the really hard part is over." He swivelled his gaze and nodded at the closed set of double doors in front of them. "Now all we have to do is walk out there in front of…everyone." He did mean _everyone_. Even as he said it he heard something in his voice fragment ever so slightly, betraying him. Brennan grinned, the tension visibly leaching out of her shoulders at the consolation of not being the only one experiencing an impending sense of doom. All at once the irony struck her like a ton of bricks; in her seven years working with Booth she'd been stunned with a cattle prod, buried alive, kidnapped for death, targeted by bombers, stalkers, poisoners, serial killers and the like, involved in high speed chases (both in car and on foot), not to mention shot at countless times, and yet somehow _this _had been the most trying day of their partnership for her.

She couldn't help but produce a mildly wry laugh. "What part was the really hard part again?" She wanted to know, cocking her head a bit in jest along with her radiant half-smile. Booth's features mirrored the beam and he sighed, falling silent for a moment under the pretence of consideration while at the same time using the pause to take her in. She looked classic; positively Victorian with her hair coiled into a voluminous up-do away from her face, the strands twisted into intricately woven ripples at the back of her head, her eyes shadowed and outlined in such a way that made her ivory skin appear to glow with a natural luminosity. A hefty pair of ornate diamond earrings dangled centimeters above her bared shoulders, preserving the integrity of her own unique persona despite the fact that she was decked out like he had never seen her. Even without all of this, sans make-up with lank hair and clad in her most shapeless sweats, she was still easily the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Today merely served to elevate her in his eyes to the status of something akin to goddess.

It took a follow-up question from her for it to occur to him how long it had been since he'd last spoken. "You realize how much harder our _jobs _are going to get after this?" She mused, sobering a bit as she pinned him under an edgy gaze.

Booth heaved another sigh, considering her words. "It's exactly what perps look for," he agreed, the timbre of his voice turning grim all of a sudden, his eyes hardening as he looked at her. "Emotional ties to exploit between their enemies. We'll be sitting ducks out in the field."

As if someone had flipped a switch, Brennan's features brightened. "I can be a duck," she proclaimed under the glow of a good-humoured smile, reiterating the same words she'd used seven years ago to beg Booth to take her into the field for the first time.

Catching the allusion, Booth returned the grin, but it didn't reach his eyes. "We'll be that much more vulnerable," he attested in a grave half-whisper, eyes vacant as they stared tightly back into her own.

Brennan cocked her head contemplatively, still retaining the shadow of a smile. "Or that much stronger," she fielded, lowering her voice to level with his. She looked up at him from under exquisitely-mascaraed lashes, latching onto his gaze purposefully. "It will be more than worth it from where I'm standing." Even saying the words a full year after making such mammoth strides in personal growth, she still found it difficult to believe they came from her own lips. How many times had she made the assertion in the past that emotional ties were ephemeral and undependable? That the concept of monogamy was an invention of modern society that went against human nature and could ultimately even pose a threat to the human population from an anthropological standpoint? And yet here she was. She hadn't necessarily changed her opinions on the majority of that, but Booth was the one exemption from her principles, and always would be. She'd merely decided that for him, anything was beyond worth it.

Moving a step closer to him, this time it was she who disarmed him with a mollifying half-smile. "We'll just have to work that much harder to always have each other's backs," she professed quietly.

Internalizing the words, Booth's eyes drilled into her. "No more secrets," he avowed seriously after a moment. "No more games. It's you and me from here on out. We're the best chance each other's got. We stick together always, no matter the consequences."

Brennan nodded, her now fully-restored heart pumping one hundred percent commitment through her veins. "Agreed."

Booth held out his hand. "Partners?" He asked, looking to seal the deal in a manner that was familiar to both of them.

Brennan answered with a content broadening of her smile. "For life," she concurred, and reached out to take his extended right hand in her left – the one that bore her old dolphin ring, newly sized and embedded with a multi-carat diamond where the dorsal fin used to be, on her third finger. As if on cue, the M.C.'s booming voice reverberated through the solid oak doors from inside the banquet hall, and both of them took a deep breath.

"…And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for; may I introduce to you the most elite crime-fighting team in D.C. – indeed perhaps in America – for the first time as husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Temperance and Seeley Booth!"

The doors yawned wide, and Booth and Brennan stepped into the room side-by-side, hand-in-hand, he in the most expensive tuxedo he would ever own, she in a dazzling, floor-length white dress she never imagined she'd find herself in, entering together to a thunderous eruption of cheers.

**EXTRAS**

**Inspirational Playlist for The End in the Show:**

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper

Hot Blooded by Foreigner

Grenade by Bruno Mars

Far Away by Nickelback

Fix You by Coldplay

One Match by Sarah Harmer

Shot Through the Heart by Bon Jovi

If I Die Young by the Band Perry

Keep on Tryin' by Poco

Stay With Me Tonight by Houston Calls

**Favourite Bones Fan Video:**

YouTube title: Bones – Booth & Brennan – "You're the Father" by BONESgeek.


End file.
